The music of U.K. artist John Glacier has rightfully earned a reputation for its unbridled cathartic intimacy and mesmeric soundscapes. She recently dropped a new EP Like A Ribbon, which included the enthralling single “Money Shows” (feat. Eartheater), as well as four other suitably alluring tracks produced by Kwes Darko and Flume.
Raised in Hackney, London she was baptized early in a broad pool of genres from reggae and dancehall to R&B-rap-pop crossovers of the 90s and early 00s. Before music became an artistic outlet Glacier wrote poems and often gave them as gifts. The words pulled from the mercurial voids of her imagination, a place she retreated to often in her adolescence.
As a teenager, Glacier had more reason than most kids her age to occupy the moldable confines of the mind: she was just 14 years old when a doctor explained that her life would be irrevocably hindered by a chronic condition known as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS). So she turned to poetry and eventually songwriting to transcend the physical limitations imposed by her body.
Similar to her music, materializing as thermodynamic translations of an obscured inner world into entrancingly ambient confessionals, Glacier coalesced into existence rather spontaneously. First came a handful of SoundCloud releases which she created after learning how to use GarageBand and Logic, but then she started appearing on tracks by LYAM and Psychedelic Ensemble. alongside artists like Shygirl, Babyfather, and Jeshi.
But it was Glacier’s debut LP SHILOH: Lost For Words that put her on the map. Emerging as a rapt introspection of her internalized netherworld, the record rallies around a familial tradition of driving out colonial enslavers via her Jamaican-Maroon roots on “Trelawny Waters,” while tracks like the conclusively ebullient “Icy” and “Platoon” are rife with sagacious self-reckonings.
“Studying life still no meaning,” she blitzes on “Cryptomnesia,” gliding through the nebulous enigmas of identity. “Leaning…Through the good and the bad / Being myself now they say that I’m mad.” Other notable tracks include the painfully yearning “Senseless” and the soul-resounding “Some Other Thing.”She returned a couple of years later with SURF GANG on JGSG — a seven-track convergence of moody electro-fueled rap that lent itself to her prodigiously heady lyricism.
The release of Like A Ribbon opens up another doorway into Glacier’s mind, its first single “Money Shows” enlisting the ethereal Eartheater for backing vocals and produced by Kwes Darko to entangle them both in its post-punk rawness. The song’s accompanying self-directed music video finds her confronting life’s dualities: cycling between scenes and moments of stagnant introversion and vivacious bursts of expression.
Unsurprisingly, the EP is rife with her incisive lyricism let loose in a smoldering soundscape, as on its murky opening track “Satellites” and the broodingly suave “Tripsteady.” It all builds toward the collection’s final track “Nevasure,” a song that proves Glacier is never more potent than when she is delving earnestly into herself. Leaving you to float through the halls of her most intimate reaches as they reverberate with intoxicating beats aflame with the vehement honesty of her ever-poetic words.
Words: Steven Ward
Like A Ribbon is available now on all streaming platforms.
Visit John Glacier on her Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
Listen to Like A Ribbon the new EP from John Glacier below!
