Glacial Drift by Glåsbird – Stationary Travels
Glåsbird is a musical alter-ego of artist and composer Harry Towell which has allowed him to carve out a particular niche in the world of neoclassical, minimalistic music focused on geographic and topographic themes tied to locations around the globe. Glacial Drift, the newest album in the project’s catalog, revolves around a series of photographs of the Swiss Alps taken in 1938 by the father of Peter Maynard, a fellow artist on the Driftworks label where it has been released. The sepia-tinted, vintage photos which portray glaciers, mountains and valleys, inspired Towell to use Glåsbird as a vehicle to explore how these landscapes may have changed over through a series of compositions which chart musical developments at particular junctures since the photographs were taken.
The aim for Glacial Drift was to tell two stories, in parallel to one another; the effects of global warming, accelerated by humans and industry, and secondly, the evolution of Ambient, Avant Garde and Minimalist music over the course of the 86 years since those photographs were taken.
Harry Towell aka Glåsbird
The chosen starting point was Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings which was performed for the first time on the 5th of November 1938. Through a series of tracks each representing a year on the timeline up to the modern day, musical themes were developed with the intention of evoking the techniques, equipment and sound aesthetic of the classical music of the era. While the tone, timbre, and instrumentation all evolve from track to track, the pristine beauty and cinematic grandeur that have become hallmarks of the Glåsbird aesthetic are manifest throughout and lend the album a sense of cohesion. All in all, it is another quietly grand expedition from this unique musical project.
Links: Bandcamp (CD/digital) | Glåsbird
Glacial Drift was released February 7, 2025, by Driftworks in two limited CD editions as well as digital download & streaming. The album was mastered by Andrew Heath.
