Secret Boyfriend – Glissement

8.3.22 by Jacob DeRaadt

This one starts out with organ driven shoe gazing pop that has me feeling a slowed down. Downer ballads. Minutes in the mood completely changes. It dissolves into the morning haze optimism of “Open Up,” which evokes a common mood with Tim Hecker’s Piano Drops album. And some strange hand drum rhythms that get into unparalleled grooves of near Krautrock variety. The feeling of being in a loop is not unbroken for most of some songs. There’s a feeling of complete vulnerability and openness I feel with this material. Sputtering prefacing insults at the original source material are eventually spat out into the ether. Some melodramatic moments on this that fade into a hypnotic cycle that draws us into fields of unaided ecstasy. I’ve played with Ryan twice and never seen him do the same set . So many moods that I can describe. Faded bold shot tones that recede into the ether. Ryan crafts albums with equally ambient noisy and pop rhythms that drive the materials into different directions. We have parts that stretch out broke distortions into melodic waves that drench us in a hovering bath of looser electrons.  We find sun nor shade completely in moving tones of anxious waiting. I find myself lost within these endless phrases of monochrome luster. 

Other parts shriek with noise paranoia, glistening nocturnal textures that shimmer with repetitious delight. We are delighted by shimmering tones glistening in the background, beckoning to deeper meanings, consuming the senses. We listen on, fixated on the spacious paranoia evoked on these oxide reels. Glissements finds us hovering shivering above an unknown planet, awaiting the next transformation. The hallways flooded with false blood vessels pulsating in excitement, awaiting the next transformation of the body in stasis. Listen at peril of your mortal mind. More strange beat experiments mixed with cut up tape sounds propel things forward. This album uses live takes for the majority of the songs on this release to its benefit. Each session feels distinct from the last. “Sun Dub” and “Walk to the West” do it for me in this category.