The Sight Below: Glider

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.