As the title indicates, the music on the debut
album from a Seattle ambient-drone maestro (who apparently doesn't like giving
out his birth name) sounds as besotted with My Bloody Valentine (whose 1990 EP
was also called Glider) as with Gas, the influential, atmospheric minimalist
electronica project of German techno producer Wolfgang Voigt. Those acts form
the clear coordinates for Glider's 49 warm, pulsating minutes, in which heavily
treated guitar nuzzles up to enveloping laptop-generated haze and a
just-submerged four-on-the-floor kick-drum pulse. (There's also a free
three-song EP available at ghostly.com, none of which is repeated on the
album.) Played low in the background, it all merges together, which is surely
the point, but crank it and the tracks' discrete details emerge, such as the
pointillist single-note guitar and carefully sculpted overtones of "Dour," or
the glacial harmonics that swirl over the top of "A Fractured Smile." Sure, any
album that's as all-timbre as this one is going to seem a little one-note. But
it's a pretty lovely note.