''No Stairway'' is the debut studio album of Glassine, the musical project of Danny Greenwald, first released online and later issued on cassette worldwide by the label Patient Sounds, in April and August 2015, respectively. The title is a reference to a line from the 1992 film ''
Wayne's World
"Wayne's World" was originally a recurring sketch from the NBC television series ''Saturday Night Live''. It evolved from a segment titled "Wayne's Power Minute" (1987) on the CBC Television series '' It's Only Rock & Roll'', as the main characte ...
''. The album garnered significant attention from music journalists for its compositional and production technique. In two
Guitar Center
Guitar Center is an American musical instrument retailer chain. It is the largest company of its kind in the United States, with 294 locations. Its headquarters is in Westlake Village, California.
Guitar Center oversees various subsidiaries in ...
stores, Greenwald tapped people playing instruments on his
iPhone, and used snippets of these low-quality trackings as loops or synth patches, playing some of them through
effects pedals
An effects unit or effects pedal is an electronic device that alters the sound of a musical instrument or other audio source through audio signal processing.
Common effects include distortion/overdrive, often used with electric guitar in ele ...
or
4-track machines. The "
dystopia
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
n" environment of Guitar Center shops and his desire to record something without a budget while in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
is what inspired his idea to use samples of recordings of people playing instruments and build compositions out of them. On ''
Fact
A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scient ...
''
's year-end list of best
Bandcamp
Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...
releases, ''No Stairway'' came in at number 19.
Background
Raised in
Columbia,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
, Greenwald first went to a Guitar Center store at age 14 to buy his first electric guitar. After that however, he rarely went to the former shop and instead bought equipment from local stores like Atomic Music in
Beltsville, Maryland
Beltsville is a census-designated place (CDP) in northern Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The community was named for Truman Belt, a local landowner. The 2020 census counted 20,133 residents. Beltsville includes the unincorporated ...
for most of his life.
He disliked Guitar Center for its "
dystopian
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
" and "unpleasant" environment, which was one of the major parts of him being influenced to make ''No Stairway'': "I wanted to take something unattractive and be able to extract beauty from it. I wanted to make that environment float on a cloud. I wanted to inspect little nuances, capture them, and paint with them."
While living in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, there was a point where Greenwald became bankrupt and wanted to create great-sounding tracks with no budget whatsoever without the need of using samples from a
digital audio workstation
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...
or other computer software.
While waiting for the train one day, he went to a Guitar Center store near
Atlantic Terminal
Atlantic Terminal (formerly Flatbush Avenue) is the westernmost stop on the Long Island Rail Road's (LIRR) Atlantic Branch, located at Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, New York City. It is the primary terminal for the F ...
out of boredom.
At the store, he heard someone playing a
Green Day
Green Day is an American rock band formed in the East Bay of California in 1987 by lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, together with bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt. For most of the band's career, they have been a powe ...
song on an electric guitar and noticed the instrument's poor tone:
Production and composition
Greenwald first tried to take control of the sounds from the expensive synthesizers Guitar Center was selling by recording samples of them, but was unimpressed with the results.
On a later visit to the shop, he recorded what would be the first sound to be featured on the album; he taped a guy who "was just going for it on a drum kit", lowering the speed of the sample of the drum recording he used.
The singer described how he felt while editing the sample: "I started to hear some kind of solace in a place that is sonically hellish.”
Greenwald started recording the album in a Guitar Center in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, and then at a shop in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
.
Instead of looking to record instruments specifically planned for a song, Greenwald taped whatever sound he thought that could become better in quality when editing them later.
Greenwald ended up with around 40 hours of
iPhone recordings to work at his home. Some snippets were played through a
4-track tape recorder, others were old
pedals
A pedal (from the Latin '' pes'' ''pedis'', "foot") is a lever designed to be operated by foot and may refer to:
Computers and other equipment
* Footmouse, a foot-operated computer mouse
* In medical transcription, a pedal is used to control p ...
and some were looped or used as synthesizer patches.
These recordings were put together,
EQ'd, mixed and mastered in
Pro Tools
Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology (formerly Digidesign) for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture (sound design, audio post-productio ...
.
Much planning was put into how the recordings were edited together, as he tried to "connect things that were seemingly un-connectable."
The end result was an album that featured
ambient
Ambient or Ambiance or Ambience may refer to:
Music and sound
* Ambience (sound recording), also known as atmospheres or backgrounds
* Ambient music, a genre of music that puts an emphasis on tone and atmosphere
* ''Ambient'' (album), by Moby
* ...
,
dub,
new-age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...
,
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...
and
post-vaporwave styles.
Release and reception
''No Stairway'' was first self-released on Bandcamp and Glassine's official
SoundCloud
SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming se ...
page on April 17, 2015.
In the same year, on August 6, record label Patient Sounds distributed the album on cassette. The title of the album is a reference to the line "No stairway, denied" from the 1992 comedy film ''
Wayne's World
"Wayne's World" was originally a recurring sketch from the NBC television series ''Saturday Night Live''. It evolved from a segment titled "Wayne's Power Minute" (1987) on the CBC Television series '' It's Only Rock & Roll'', as the main characte ...
''.
''Live at Guitar Center'', an album by Brooklyn musician Noah Wall that also used Guitar Center recordings, was released slightly before the Glassine album on April 6.
When Greenwald and Patient Sounds accidentally found out about Wall's record, he almost didn't want to release ''No Stairway'', feeling "gutted" someone had already made an album with an identical concept to his project.
However, when the label made Wall aware of Greenwald's release, he was very excited about the album and his support got Greenwald motivated again to distribute his record.
Greenwald has not sent ''No Stairway'' to Guitar Center despite suggestion to do so from his relatives.
A ''
Tiny Mix Tapes
''Tiny Mix Tapes'' (also ''TMT'' or ''tinymixtapes'') is an online music and film webzine that focuses primarily on new music and related news. In addition to its reviews, it is noted for its subversive, political, and sometimes surreal news, a ...
'' journalist praised the album's style as "some post-vaporwave produced faux melodic ambiance that’s all at once subconscious music and next-level
field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside a recording studio, and the term applies to recordings of both natural and human-produced sounds. It also applies to sound recordings like electromagnetic fields or vibra ...
. And the esoterica and nostalgic level of listening here is completely outta-whack when paired with the idea that NONE of these samples are realmed in the same genre or created (potentially) by the same person."
Critic Jesse Locke featured it on his column for ''
Aux'' "No Rest for the Obsessed", suggesting that listeners will want repeated hearings of Greenwald's album unlike ''Live at Guitar Center''.
Jayson Greene, scoring ''No Stairway'' a 7.2 out of ten in his review for ''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
'', called the album along with Wall's record "slight redemptive" reminders of Guitar Center's commercial success during the 1990s pre-Internet period, which contrast with a current time where the chain of retailers may shut down quickly due to extreme financial decrease.
He called Greenwald's editing of such low-quality sound recordings as "impressive and even a little bewildering, but the knowledge proves unnecessary."
In May 2015, ''
Fact
A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scient ...
'' magazine honored the record as one of their favorite Bandcamp releases for the month of April,
and on their year-end list of "20 best Bandcamp releases", it was ranked number 19. In ''
The Fader
''The Fader'' (stylized as ''FADER'') is a magazine based in New York City that was launched in 1999 by Rob Stone and Jon Cohen. The magazine covers music, style and culture. It was the first print publication to be released on iTunes.
It is o ...
''
's "Top 2 Reasons Guitar Center Still Shreds", ''No Stairway'' was number two and ''Live at Guitar Center'' topped the list.
Track listing
Length adapted from the following source:
References
{{Authority control
2015 debut albums
Vaporwave albums
Experimental music albums by American artists
New-age albums by American artists
Dub albums
Ambient albums by American artists
Self-released albums
Field recording