This Pain, It Is A Glacier Moving Through You

Back in September, I was introduced to John Glacier via a guest spot on the Jamie xx single Dafodil. Continuing a run of releases this year, she has just released a new single, Found. 

 

It's a memerising listen, spoken word rap over skittering, glitchy beats and keys. The video is also a compelling watch, fashioned as a seemingly collage of outtakes for a 'proper' video, grainy excerpts, switch between colour and monochrome, but all focused on a central figure. A black woman at the microphone, Afro, flowing dress split at the thigh, weeds (or dead flowers?) rising up around her.

 

This is John Glacier: Hackney resident, Jamaican parents, six siblings, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, steeped in a stew of musical genres since childhood, poet and rapper.

And the name? “I’m one thing and another thing at the same time,” she replied in a 2022 interview with Dazed magazine. But why? “Because I am John Glacier.” 

Her first name is actually John, but she expanded on the choice of surname. “I like glaciers because you see them for what they are but within that one thing, there are so many layers,” she said. “In my mind, glaciers are these blocks of preservation.” 

 

Found is the second track to be shared from forthcoming second album Like A Ribbon, although there was also a preview EP of the same name earlier this year, all but one of the five tracks making the full album cut. 

 

Previous video Money Shows, directed by Glacier herself, places her front and centre, dispassionate delivery underpinned by a chugging guitar riff.

 

John's Bandcamp page includes Broken Macbook, what I assume to be her debut release from 2017, as well as the Duppy Gun EP, which came out in June. Both recommended. 

 

Debut album SHILOH: Lost For Words emerged in 2021 via the PLZ Make It Ruins label. I've been listening to it for the first time whilst writing this post and it's quite something. A dozen songs, only one over three minutes, the whole thing done and dusted in just over twenty five. Yet, none of the songs feel like incomplete sketches. Here are a couple of examples.

 

 

 

Not content with a steady flow of music under her own name, John has collaborated on the aforementioned Jamie xx single, and also with her go-to producer Vegyn for the title track of the latter's A Dream Goes On Forever EP, which dropped in February.

 

Vegyn followed this up in April with an album, The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions. A Dream Goes On Forever is the opening track, but there's a second guest spot, the rather spectacular In The Front.

 

John revisited the glacier analogy in the 2002 Dazed interview. “My existence isn’t what it looks like. When you break down a glacier, there’s more to it than meets the eye – your understanding of what you thought it was isn’t exactly it.” 

 

Pause. Smile. “And at the same time, they’re cold and icy as well!”

 

Personally, this is a voyage of discovery I'm glad to have embarked on. I'm looking forward to seeing what's revealed next.

 

For those of you with a passing interest in my penchant for choosing song lyric extracts for post titles, today's is lifted from John Grant's song Glacier. Why? Because a JG post was the first that came up when I typed 'John Glacier' into the Dubhed search engine to track down and include the Jamie xx link. It seemed like an apposite pick!