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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

Missy Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (The New York Times), “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York) and “one of the new wave of scarily smart young composers” (sequenza21.com). Her music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, pianist Emanuel Ax, the American Composers Orchestra, JACK Quartet, New York City Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, cellist Maya Beiser, violinist Jennifer Koh, pianist Kathleen Supové, Dublin’s Crash Ensemble, the Sydney Symphony and many others. She is currently Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre-Group, and in 2011/12 was Composer/Educator in residence with the Albany Symphony. Missy was a visiting professor of music at New York University in 2013, and recently joined the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music.
 
The 2014/15 season will include many new projects and collaborations, including a new work for the Ethel String Quartet, a performance on the New York Philharmonic’s CONTACT! Series, and the second release from Missy’s band Victoire – an album of her works recorded with Wilco percussionist Glenn Kotche and electronic musician Lorna Dune. Missy and Victoire will perform around the country next year in support of their new album, and will join Meredith Monk in a celebration of her work at Carnegie Hall. Along with librettist Royce Vavrek, Missy is also working on Breaking the Waves, a chamber opera based on Lars von Trier’s 1996 film, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia.Breaking the Waves will premiere in 2016.
 
Continue reading at missymazzoli.com…
 
VICTOIRE
This “all-star, all-female band” (Time Out New York) of voices, strings, keyboards, clarinets and electronics performs Mazzoli’s hypnotic blend of dreamy art pop and rich romanticism, enveloping the listener in a tapestry of classical influences, distorted guitars, multi-layered vocals, vintage keyboard sounds and stuttering samples. Victoire has performed all over the world, most recently at Carnegie Hall in a collaborative performance with Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche as part of the Ecstatic Festival. Their debut album Cathedral City, was named one of 2010′s best classical albums by the New York Times, Time Out New York, the New Yorker and NPR, and Pitchfork praised the group for “condensing moments of focused beauty and quiet conviction from the pandemic distractions of modern life. (7.8)” NPR’s First Listen asks “Is Victoire’s music post-rock, post-mimimalist or pseudo-post-pre-modernist indie-chamber-electronica? It doesn’t particularly matter. It’s just good music.” In the past few years they have played in venues all over the world including Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the M.A.D.E. Festival in Sweden, the C3 Festival in Berlin, Millennium Park (Chicago), and the Winter Garden (New York, as part of the Bang-on-a-Can New Music Marathon). Victoire is Missy Mazzoli (compositions, keyboards), Mellissa Hughes (voice), Olivia De Prato (violin), Eileen Mack (clarinet), Lorna Krier (keyboards), and Eleonore Oppenheim (double bass).
 
Missy Mazzoli official site
Victoire official site
Lorna Krier official site

Noveller is the solo electric guitar project of Brooklyn/Austin-based composer and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. Handling the guitar as her muse, Lipstate summons a sonic palette so rich as to challenge the listener to conceive of how it’s housed in a single instrument manipulated by a solitary performer. Her one-woman guitar soundscapes have captured the attention of NPR, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, and The Wall Street Journal.
 
She released her first two full-length albums on Brooklyn noise label No Fun Productions in 2009. In 2010, Lipstate started her own imprint, Saffron Recordings, as a vehicle for releasing the Noveller full-length ‘Desert Fires’ and a split LP between Noveller and unFact (David Wm. Sims of the Jesus Lizard) titled ‘Bleached Valentine’. In May 2011, she released the critically acclaimed ‘Glacial Glow’ jointly through Saffron Recordings and Weird Forest. She teamed up with Important Records and Taiga Records in 2013 to release the highly anticipated followup album ‘No Dreams’. In July 2014, Shelter Press released a vinyl pressing of a collaborative effort between Noveller and thisquietarmy. Lipstate’s newest full-length, ‘Fantastic Planet’, arrives on January 27th, 2015, on Fire Records.
 
Noveller has toured the U.S. and internationally, at times supporting acts such as St. Vincent, Xiu Xiu, the Jesus Lizard, U.S. Girls, Aidan Baker, and Emeralds. Lipstate has collaborated with several renowned musicians, including live improvised duo performances with Carla Bozulich (Evangelista, The Geraldine Fibbers), David Wm. Sims (the Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), and JG Thirlwell (Foetus, Manorexia). She has previously performed as a member of Cold Cave, Parts & Labor, and One Umbrella. Lipstate has also participated in Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Army, Ben Frost’s “Music for 6 Guitars” Ensemble, and Glenn Branca’s 100 guitar ensemble. Lipstate joined the hit podcast Radiolab on a nationwide tour of their live show, Apocalyptical, performing a live cinematic score for their show along with fellow musicians Glenn Kotche (of Wilco) on percussion and Darin Gray on upright bass.
 
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