“Glasswork” by Glass Elk, EP review

by Samuel Hernandez

In Glass Elk‘s new EP Glasswork, the piano provides the distance, whereas the pulsing dance tracks attempt to reconcile what’s been created. The EP opens with a haunting and somber touch of the keys. What else could piano keys be but haunting when you open with an expectation of electronica driven dance music and instead are confronted by spacious tracks that offer time to contemplate? Even the name of the band and the name of the EP, Glasswork, offer up that philosophical contemplation. Glass elk, a facsimile, a perfect recreation of an elk, and Glasswork, the perfect recreation or work, or even something to look through and find meaning.

Songs on Glasswork are mostly transformative.  They offer spacious melodies, or they offer driven beats. It’s an experiment to marry classical elements, high intellectual stuff, with contemporary dance elements, the extreme fist bumping variety. The album opens with a subdued Pink Floyd-esque wispy piano arrangement on “1000” which eventually devolves into a glitch ridden dark tunnel. The ending wraps up whatever chase the beginning has set us on. “1000” also transitions us into the synth heavy movement of “Blue Koi,” and then we’re trading heavy throbbing instrumentals with laid back melodies.

The album works best when the lead ins are stark. The arrangements working to a suspenseful build and then into the climax, and the listener is almost overpowered.

The landscape feels bleak, but ready to be filled with something. Glasswork is an interesting beginning, maybe a promise of hip hop lyrics to be laid on top of the often times gorgeously executed coupling of piano, soft musical elements, and the thumping dance elements. The EP works, the marriage between classical and contemporary is managed by letting the music play into itself, giving space for silence so that the incorporated elements stand out.