S*GLASS - Cesspool of the Angels

"First solo LP of 2023 by S. Glass of Glands of External Secretion, Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, This Is Yvonne Lovejoy and Bananafish Magazine.

Numerous practices make up the electro-acoustic sound collages created by S Glass. He combines tape music, electronic processing, voice, found sound, and chance operations. Every show uses a different batch of curated audio, mixed live, while the self-produced studio albums are more refined assemblages. The playing of non-musical objects is sometimes incorporated (dental floss, aluminum foil, wind-up toys, metal lunch box, cabbage). Self-shot video is screened during sets, which are mostly textures made with multiple layers that slowly wobble out of sync, jump cuts, and a smattering of primitive animation. The overall effect is one of surreal disorientation.

S*Glass is a founder of Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble (a large non-musical music group begun in the early 1980s), and Glands of External Secretion (a duo with rock musician Barbara Manning since the early ’90s). From the late ’80s until 2004, he was the main driver behind Bananafish. Since 2017, he’s performed as a solo artist and completed U.S. tours of the West Coast, New England, part of the South and Midwest, England and Scotland, a handful of places in Canada. In late 2023, he tours Australia and New Zealand.

“The first time I tried to listen to this album I made the error of bringing it on a train journey to hear through headphones. Wrongly thinking I’d be able to absorb it in a focused manner this way, I was instead instantly enclosed by a gigantic family of tourists who spoiled the experience with their endless routine of stomping around, shouting constant updates or appeals for updates at each other and playing their shitty kid videos on an iPad. Following them, some rich-looking guy boarding at the airport sat next to me sporting a tan, a purple ‘VIP’ wristband and some of the most staggering breath I’ve ever experienced in public. Suffice it to say I didn’t quite get the full measure of the album in question. Imagine my guilt, then, upon playing it a few days later at home, in relative peace and quiet, and finding that the central nervous system level annoyance I felt that day had its roots far more in the music than the actions of those poor people." - Minimum Table Stacks.