Glass Egg Conjure a Distant Dream on “in case i forget you'“

A glass egg is absurdly fragile, one breath away from shattering into a million irreparable pieces. So try breaking it in a fog you can’t see anything through. That’s the murkiness I hear in Glass Egg’s first EP: the kind of mist that comes from popping a hole in your heart and letting the contents eke out. It’s damp and it smells like old unloved wood, residue of a half-forgotten memory.

in case I forget you is a humble little collection of songs, each centered around Emilia Glaser’s slow swirling guitar figures and decorated with Julien Stefanzick’s instrumental accompaniment. It’s not exactly lo-fi, but it is produced with a purpose; the top of the treble is shaved off, leaving just bruise-colored bass and the blip&chip of drum programming. Save for the rippling, unresolving opening “back to me,” the material glides with the softness of an easy dream. And the textures, unique per track, are universally perfect for it; “vern song” is crystalline, “tightrope” is twilit, and “clearly” does the Good work of reclaiming the ghost from Red House Painters’ “Katy Song.” The song’s drift on long, but the environments are so spacious that the length feels generous, more so than overbearing.

In general (but especially in its pendulum-like closing track, “patterns”) it hearkens back a little to Beach House’s first record, that old weathered transmission from the center of an antique snow globe. More regionally, I hear acts like Power Strip and Medium Weekend, peddlers of the past and spinners of videotape webs. Theirs is less anemoia than anemosis - where the former robs the listener of imagination by providing a prefabricated world to exist in, this kind of music plays on what’s already in the mind. It’s a locked door that requires a piece of yourself to enter, and that is so, so much more valuable.