South London based label glint music exists mostly in the digital realm, having originated in 2023. Emerging out of the melted loops of jb glazer’s Everything is Heavy rain, the label’s output isn’t clearly fixed on one sound, with label runner glazer referring to it as “very online; [it] holds onto some of those ideas of the internet being somewhere to connect.”

The output swings from smudgy ambient improvised collages to scurrying post-internet club music as well as putting out singer-songwriter indie pop projects. In glazer’s words, “It’s nice to have the music feel quite self aware. Not self aware in an obnoxious way, but aware of the world around it. It doesn't always have to be a critique, it can just be swimming in time and space.”

Rory J S
“romcom”
From Murky J

Deep warm synth bass and cold, sharp and dilapidated midi-piano notes set the listener in a deserted jazz club after hours as Rory has stolen an unexpected moment to play. Melodies wander recursively as the simple arrangement eases the listener in. Recorded in the midst of a snow storm in Japan, isolated in a hotel room, glazer talks about Murky J instilling the feeling of being “an alien in winter”. The final three notes are spread over 20 seconds and hang as if siphoned off an Angelo Badalamenti score.

excel dj featuring xool xool
“english as xxxx”
From zoomers (realm era '✯- '✮)

excel dj’s second release with glint music, following their dryly titled Another Release, zoomers amps up the silliness and positions excel dj firmly in jester mode. Using a glut of faux radio samples, nonsense language as well as summoning the spirit of the Yamaha keyboard “DJ” button, they overwhelm the listener with frenzied footwork and singeli style rhythmic patterns. This is further glued together with epic collage sensibilities. The final track on the album is described by glazer as “obviously the pop song on zoomers and one that shows excel dj at their most earnest... This song secured the album for me.”

Milk Eyed Sigh
“CEX Bag”
From Dog Verses

Room recorded bleary ambient washes captured from Carl Brown’s turntable sampling, accompanied by Cam Molloy’s scattered drum tinkering, make up “CEX Bag”'s nostalgic glaze. “A solo walk through the high street, fractured and artificial but human,” summarises glazer of the album's ambience, before adding, “CEX Bags are kind of like JD bags for RPG heads”. Their collaboration stemmed from glazer’s release with Brown’s label Them There Records, and glazer living with Molloy over lockdown, after Molloy “came to fix something and then got Covid”, which prevented him leaving for the year when lockdown was announced.

Competition
“cold”
From pomme

Newcastle based musician, artist and academic Craig Pollard opens the album with a choppy, waltzing track. Using string-like piano strikes he creates a melancholic ruminatory feel, even as the melodies begin to tangle up and the waltz gets faster and more confusing. Glazer describes “cold” as “human emotions transcribed through robotics”, circling back to the creation of the album using an old midi-guitar synthesiser. In a similar vein to the output of Rory J S and Alexandra Python, Competition sits on the singer-songwriter experimental pop spectrum.

ex.sses
“888”
From strange echoes

London's ex.sses combines intimate sound design with heavy bass fields and brash kicks that collapse in and out of the grid. Their work often delves into bodily intimacy using processed ASMR vocal samples. On “888” a warped, pitched down vocal sample can be heard saying “imagine us/come closer” before dispersing out into a plume of fog. Evocatively described by glazer as instilling the sensation of catching “eyes with someone passing between the bar and the dancefloor. The lights are strobing and you forget about it but whatever that feeling was stays in the sound from the speakers, infiltrating your body”.

CJ Calderwood
“[Sick]”
From Umbra Lumen Tomos

One half of Lol K and a member of Good Sad Happy Bad, Calderwood's debut solo EP was recorded during a period of medical treatment. “[Sick]” funnels confronting drone bursts of what sound like melded ambulance sirens and saxophone squalls into the listener's ears: it's like being stuck in traffic as the urgency of getting to the hospital increases and it's pouring with rain. Pairing it with the follow up track “Keyed Out“ creates a stark break as the noise cuts off and a piano and flute arrangement sink in.

Alexandra Python
“The Rooms”
From Places I Go

Alexandra Python wished to stay anonymous upon the release of this introspective organ laden hypnogogic pop EP. As glazer says, “AP is a mystery that was passed on through a friend.” Places I Go was named after a lyric from The Sundays’ “Here’s Where The Story Ends”, and as the penultimate track on the album it winds down into dubstep schisms. The vocals lean toward Lolina and Inga Copeland stylings through the reverbed processing and layering. Listening to “the dubstep flourishes amongst the organ and drum loops” took glazer to “a specific seaside town” like Hastings.

jb glazer
“Siness”
From Everything is Heavy rain

Originally meant to be played at a third of the speed, “Siness” employs semi-indecipherable, hurried spoken passages combined with gaseous pipe noise and tumbled beats spilling into empty oil tank convolution reverb so that the reflections bounce around. Yanking us out of the club just as quickly as glazer dropped us in before we're kicked into a wind tunnel and then unfurled into tactile string orchestrations. “Written during the days of getting the [London bus] P13 pre-7am,” glazer says, the track evokes “pouring rain and finding someone waiting to take you to anywhere other than wherever the bus was actually going”.

Read Misha Farrant’s full Unlimited Editions report on glint music in The Wire 502. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital magazine library.