Glasser on Facebook | Glasser on Soundcloud

Interiors, Cameron Mesirow’s second full-length release as Glasser, is a more considered, confident, and much more sharply personal album than its predecessor. It’s central themes are love and anxiety and the structural constraints of both in the landscape of one’s life. In the three years since Cameron released her breakout debut “Ring”, she toured around the world (with Jónsi of Sigur Rós, The XX, Delorean, among others) and left her California home for New York. Along the way, she discovered a new partner in producer Van Rivers (Fever Ray, Blonde Redhead) whose background in techno production added expansive spacial elements to her music that reflect both the looming, condensed architecture of Glasser’s new adopted home as well as the intricate internal worlds she conjures in on her own.

The tension between interior and exterior space fills the album. In architect Rem Koolhaas’ book Delirious New York, which Mesirow credits as an inspiration, the author suggests that New York’s massive, stoic-faced buildings are monuments rife with secrets. Interiors is Cameron’s attempt to exorcise and address some of those metropolitan secrets. “I thought a lot about the physical impositions in my life, and about the fluid emotional boundaries in my relationships,” Mesirow says. “There’s no limit to what can be said about these structures. I can’t help but live and work in them, exploring their many folds.” On “Landscape” Cameron explores the limitations of symbiosis in a romantic relationship. “Exposure” characterizes the alienation of life in an ever-changing metropolis as a “modern trouble” that no one feels responsible for but all complacently contribute to. A trio of shorter songs called “Windows” punctuate the production and feature some of the most experimental sections of music- windows being where the inside and outside nearly meet, providing partial glimpses of scenes from other worlds, but preventing contact. There is urgency pervasive throughout the record, both simultaneously to gain access to feelings or people as well as wanting to be released from them.

The instrumentation of the album is a mixture of synthetic and organic sounds, real strings, reeds and drums combined with programmed ones, a purposeful coupling of natural enemies. “I like music where you’re not thinking about what a specific instrument is,” she says. “An instrument-less quality. It doesn’t come from a band, but from a whisper in the wind.” As on Ring there are sounds used for unlikely purposes; vocals used as percussive accents, or melodic themes assembled from environmental sounds. The song “Design” illustrates this with Cameron’s own pitched-down vocals serving as a writhing bass line in the frantic depiction of lust. The Glasser we find on
Interiors is smoother and smokier, more confident and defined against an increasingly stoic electronic music backdrop. The effect is a paragon of sonic architecture–a soundspace that’s packed tight but never feels crowded.

Glasser has always valued a visual component to compliment the music. For Interiors Cameron worked with artist Jonathan Turner, a member of performance art group Yemenwed. Jonathan’s futuristic work establishes the visual palate for all the album’s visuals – all of the artwork, videos, and photos are the result of Cameron and Jonathan’s collaboration.

Photo credit: Jonathan Turner

Eva Salina official site | Eva Salina on Facebook

In their collaboration, Eva Salina & Peter Stan pick up and continue an interrupted legacy of empowered female voices in Balkan Romani (gypsy) music. Amplifying voices of past generations of Romani women musicians, Eva & Peter employ tenderness, grace, passion and a commitment to keeping these songs alive and evolving, while inspiring and teaching young people in the Balkans & Balkan diaspora to participate in living traditions. Eva & Peter were featured artists at globalFEST 2018 ( “poised, lustrous”—NY Times, 1/15/18), and released their first duo album, SUDBINA (“…darkly glorious”—Popmatters), 3/30/2018 on Vogiton Records.

Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs official site

Hello, my name is Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. I am a Berkeley-born, Los Angeles-based composer and multi-media artist. I create entry points into my compositions through sculpture, video, costume, and performance. The core theme of my practice is the conviction that the creation of new mythologies can lead to the deconstruction + devastation of real-life hierarchical structures. I lead Community Chorus, a resistance-themed, no-commitment chorus; I make up one half of the pop duo, Bouquet; and am the creator/composer of the choral/movement ensemble, Song of Eurydice.

I’ve presented work at The Getty Center, deYoung Museum, Hammer Museum, MOCA LA, SFMOMA, Bangkok University, High Desert Test Sites, Berkeley Art Museum and All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival (UK).