glider are a lo-fi pop band from the southwest of the UK. This debut full-length, titled simply demos, was created after members Tom Lobban and Louie Newlands spent several years sending material back and forth, eventually finishing enough tracks for an album. The band recognise their sound isn’t as polished as some of the genre’s big hitters, but that’s part of the charm. “The recordings are rough cause we have cheap gear and limited technical knowledge”, they say, “but we’re fine with that”.
As if to prove this immediately, the first track, ‘WEN’ is super fuzzed-out indie pop, all shimmering, screeching feedback. It’s the kind of song that has a grainy sweetness, as if your speakers are reaching out with staticky arms to give you a loving embrace.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=4154453231 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=2646223846]
This theme is extended on tracks such as ‘cool’, which slo-mo shreds in a wash of feedback, the calm vocals smooth beneath the squall of guitar. This full-bodied sound can also be found on ‘see you there’, which eventually blooms into an almost post-rock roil.
Some of the songs take a completely different tack, such as the hushed and mumbled ‘the scent of a salesman’ and the sedate dream pop of ‘virile poetry’. The final track of the tape’s first side begins in an equally quiet manner, but soon opens out into dissonant guitar and rolling clouds of fuzz.
Side 2 is equally eclectic, opening with a galloping homebrew percussion which wobbles and dissipates as quickly as it arrives, transitioning into the murky pop of ‘the agency’. ‘aching stomach – version 2’ is a strange pop song, swaying as if the soundtrack to a surreal dream sequence, a shadowy atmosphere that’s furthered on ‘the honey soaked leg of the worker bee’. Things are refreshed with the searing guitar of ‘and the weather report 2 maybe…’. which sounds like someone singing along to a blaring indie rocker in the apartment next door, before the slow plodding slacker pop of ‘leaning on the parapet’.
“I try to focus on the probability
of succeeding in this field
its difficult to see”
The album ends on ‘tracey barlow playing kiddies keyboards’, a mammoth ten minute track that could’ve made a short EP all of its own. It has all the hallmarks that you’d expect from glider having come this far, unconventional structures and echoey disaffected vocals and peaks of crackled feedback. If that sounds like your thing, then you’d be wise to check out the whole album.
You can get demos now on cassette via French label Hidden Bay Records, or as a free download from the glider Soundcloud page.
