“The Locked Book is a real gift for the fans of The Glimmer Room who were worried about Andy Condon's silence in the last years”
1 Mr. Price Remembers 4:14 2 Control Objects 7:24 3 Sleeping Observer 9:22 4 Base Room 4:09 5 Yours Sincerely, S.H. Glanville 4:06 Silent Rookery | Silentcd10
(E.P. CD/DDL 29:25) (V.F.) (Ambient melodious EM)
I am maybe out of my shoes, but I feel a movement of revival from The Glimmer Room. Quiet since A Return to Cromley Hall (in April 2013), except for a parallel project with The Long Night appeared in summer 2014, Andy Condon seems to take back the guides of the musical writing with projects introduced during his passages at the E-Scape Festival of 2016 and at the famous The Awakenings Festival in last April. Moreover, on this matter, Andy Condon gives to all those who want to savor his music an extract completely free of charge on his Bandcamp site. THE LOCKED BOOK comes to loop the loop of this trilogy in the form of E.P. begun with A Diary of Occurrences at the very end of 2010.
Mr. Price Remembers opens this E.P. of around thirty minutes, divided between 5 tracks, with a wave as discreet as the whisper of a bass line walking along walls. A movement of violin espouses this delicate curve on which are anchoring notes of a piano which cries in fascinating fluty chants, in orchestrations to twist the soul and finally in layers of voices. These layers which got loose from the orchestrations remind us that we listen The Glimmer Room. In sometimes pastoral but especially crepuscular atmospheres, Mr. Price Remembers inspires confidence for the fans of Andy Condon who are hungry of music since A Return to Cromley Hall some 4 years farther. A more tough, heavier and crawling line of bass is sculpturing the basis of what is an appearance of an ambient rhythm in Control Objects. Arpeggios dance there naively, while a more austere layer is undulating such as a shadow in the night while releasing those perfumes of obsessing atmosphere which mark out the compositions of Andy Condon. Angelic choruses deepen this decoration while the harmonies which sparkle like specters are glittering like prism, uniting the darkness and the brightness on an air which is familiar to us. Sleeping Observer begins with banging of doors and steps which resound by climbing a long spiral staircase. Layers of voices whisper throughout this ascent, adding a veil of mysticism to this opening which is melting in a splendid harmonious decoration. Weaved in a synth which murmurs as a wet handkerchief of tears leaving the cheek of his owner, the melody floats with this obsessing link to our soul on a slow ambient rhythm where waltzes a pleiad of orchestral and electronic effects. This title is the equivalent of the wonderful The View from the Summerhouse from A Diary of Occurrences. To the greatness of The Glimmer Room! Base Room offers quite a different vibe with a good mid-tempo forged by nervous sequences which flicker around another delicate melody thrown in a structure a little bit spasmodic. Quieter and clearly more in ambient mode, Yours Sincerely, S.H. Glanville dips us back into The Glimmer Room's glaucous mysteries with an ambient music pushed by the impulses of a bass line and of the smooth orchestrations which are frozen there.
THE LOCKED BOOK is a real gift for the fans of The Glimmer Room who were worried about Andy Condon's silence in the last years. It's also a little opus which shows a good diversity in the compositions of the English musician and which looks strangely like A Diary of Occurrences, so looping wonderfully the loop of this trio of E.P. from The Glimmer Room.
Sylvain Lupari (July 26th, 2017) *****
Available on The Glimmer Room Bandcamp