AMN Reviews: Caldon Glover – Metrophagy (2024; Cryo Chamber)

The sound worlds of Caldon Glover combine a vast array of tones, textures, patterns, and techniques into a strange and wonderful cinematic experience. The pieces on Metrophagy are no exception as they produce immersive alien atmospheres with staccato runs of clicking that suggest the movement of biomechanical lifeforms.

Glover excels in weaving together diverse sonic elements to form cohesive, darkly majestic pieces. His toolkit includes expansive sound waves, ambient drones, echoes, industrial noises, distortion, feedback, and an array of beatless percussive sounds. One of the most compelling embodiments of these elements is how the waves quickly build to dominating crescendos and then pass in a fortepiano manner. You can hear similar passages in modern science fiction movies. Another aspect is how he layers the aforementioned clicking atop his compositions and then manipulates its tempo.

Glover’s stated theme for Metrophagy is one of a present dystopia – how our modern life has constructed invisible webs that define and constrain us in ways that even we do not understand. A side effect of this is the growing sense of isolation that we all feel.

I’ve yet to hear a Caldon Glover album that I did not like, much less one that did not force me to sit and focus on its content. This one, like last year’s Ùir, is simultaneously beautiful, difficult, and sublime.

Metrophagy will be released March 26 by Cryo Chamber.