Glacis - Borders

A Closer Listen

Previously on the Borders series …

In the first episode we covered the launch of Glacis‘ epic four-album project, released six months at a time and now culminating in a four-LP box set (with each segment also available separately).  The project began as Euan Alexander Millar McMeeken moved to the Scottish border and began to think about the concept of borders and the multiple crises raging around the world, from the Scottish Independence movement to the Trump wall and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.  If anything, the Borders series has accumulated more meaning in the eighteen months since its launch, as famine, genocide and a fateful reelection have been added to the mix.

This being said, the Borders series is neither angry nor confrontational, but melancholic and calm. On the one hand, it serves as a requiem for open borders, trade and communication; at the same time, it espouses hope, as represented in its titles, each a facet of virtue: Perseverance, Innocence, Exuberance, Reverence.  It may be coincidental that the letters spell PIER, implying not only a safe place to dock, but the welcoming edge of a border.

Perseverance is the first and most mournful installment, the initial reaction to a confluence of crises.  As it begins with “I Shut My Eyes and the World Drops Dead,” one cannot help but think of the pandemic that should have taught the world that they were “all in it together,” but instead led to a rise in demagogues and the uprooting of traditional values such as empathy, hospitality and compromise.  One can hear the sadness in the grooves, amplified by Aaron Martin’s cello.  The album also represents winter: not only physical winter, but spiritual winter, a deep malaise.

The fact that Innocence ends with “Wake Me When It’s Over” indicates that the album is less about a feeling of innocence than the loss of innocence.  Piano and strings swirl about the album, gently settling as dust molecules, or unwanted revelation that lowers one’s expectation of humanity and of life in general.  The moods swing back and forth a bit, the piano in “An Indifferent Morning Sky” offering a bit of brightness.  The piano creaks in the next piece, a welcome touch of intimacy that reminds the listener of Glacis in his farmhouse.  The guitar and violin are comforting companions.  Innocence may be bruised, but joy is not forgotten.  In “My Heart Opens and Closes (For SH),” the implication is that deep relationships may still have the power to break the dark enchantment.

“Nothing Hurts Forever,” the artist writes.  Yes, but how long will it hurt?  The shifting emotions of the album imply that multiple futures remain open.  The track itself is as placid as soft ripples on a lake.  But as “The Sky Gives Over Its Bitterness” enters with a pounding, one senses that things are about to change.  Despite being only a minute long, this thunderclap of a track interrupts the calm, while the threat of its return hangs over the listener like the sword of Damocles.  When the other shoe drops in “Hear,” it’s almost a relief.

Exuberance flips the script by introducing two side-long tracks instead of smaller offerings.  In these long-form compositions, Glacis has time to stretch, allowing for slow, intricate development.  Is there still room for exuberance in the face of xenophobia and national polarization?  A long track implies patient listening to match the sounds: a subtle suggestion for all dialogue. “Walls Beneath Walls Beneath Walls Beneath Walls” builds gradually and gorgeously, adding new elements when they make sense, the product of reflection and careful consideration, the opposite of reactionism.  In only nineteen minutes, the piece shifts from ambient to drone to modern composition, as if reconsidering a position and arriving at a new conclusion.

“The Debatable Land” is a bit more churning, with a dense beginning and end and a softer center.  When the strings are introduced, they sound like the voice of reason.  Just past the midpoint, a vast chasm enters on the far end of a drone: an extended whisper that complements the static in the preceding piece.  The piano contracts a ladder, each note a rung for the listener to ascend.  The track ends in a higher place than where it began.

Finally there is Reverence, a single track spread across two sides, titled “Across the Silent Water I Lift Mine Eyes Unto the Hills Side,” a reference to Psalm 121, which begins, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.  My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”  The title connects the piece to Glacis’ Scottish home, making the reference personal; the Lord may be his help, but also the silent consolation of nature.  The first half of Side A is pure ambient bliss, drones developing at the halfway point, borne on the backs of piano keys.  And then the entire soundscape shifts.  The static cloud, present on prior installments, disappears, creating room for gentle chimes and soft, intertwined voices, the sonic watermark of the entire project.

Side B sets a piano pattern in place and lets it loop like a question waiting for an answer.  The instruments swirl around the question, building their own response, eventually subsuming the loop.  As the album ends, one wonders if the stalemates of the world might be broken as well, and if perseverance, innocence, exuberance and reverence might have enough strength to break the world out of its malaise.  Satomaimagae’s closing poem, translated to Gaelic and intoned by Donald John Morrison, suggests a deep chasm and the hope that the gap may be crossed, the connections between lands and people restored.  The teachings of the Borders series may be quiet, but they reflect an eternal hope. (Richard Allen)