Anton Glamb

t’s an ocean of crap—the kind of room you expect college students to have but never actually expect to see—and in the middle of it all is a six-foot-tall tower of electronic music equipment. A microphone stands next to it, and a keyboard has been jammed into the desk drawer. This is where Anton Glamb, CC ’07, records. Glamb is a bit like that tower of electronica in the middle of his Furnald room; you’ll really never be able to say what it is or what it’s doing, but it’s still pretty damn cool.


I’m going to have to agree with the genre that my iTunes bestows upon Glamb, which is “unclassifiable,” although if you were forced to define his style, the closest description would be house-meets-dance-meets-hip-hop-meets-’80s-rock-meets-drum-and-bass. Glamb himself doesn’t really try to classify his work, but he does admit he’s drawn some inspiration from the dance floor. “I take a lot of elements from dance music, but I never really use the dance music format,” he says. “My stuff’s a little more raw.” This concept of experimenting with elements of electronica lies beneath his new album Do It, which is being released by CU Records this Saturday. It’s an idea that Glamb caught onto when he was a child. “If I had toys that made sounds I would keep pressing them on and off and I would mess with the speed of tape players [to make beats].”


He didn’t necessarily think that his interest in pushing buttons would lead to a music career. But when he came to Columbia, living in a single room with no one to bother, he found himself playing with music more and more. His childhood was filled with instruments—classical piano at five, violin after that, and trumpet in high school—but he never really took to group collaborations. “I found that a lot of times, when I was younger, people in bands were more interested in the image of being in a band than actually making music.” He eventually went out and bought a drum machine, an act that put him at the forefront of an entirely different musical path than one that he, or most people he knew, had ever been down.


It’s Glamb’s refusal to fall captive to a set of concrete ideas that really fuels the novelty of his sound. Unlike many music elitists at Columbia and other universities, he doesn’t condemn more mainstream artists; he actually has nice things to say about bands like Good Charlotte. “Those people are all really good musicians,” he says. “But there’s an ‘already-hot’ formula, and they’re really good at fitting that mold. I’m trying to do something that’s different.”


That difference is all about letting the music come naturally. A lot of his recording process consists of laying down a looped track on his drum machine and singing over it. “I just go by what syllables I like, then I try to figure out what it means or what it should mean,” he says. This is a constant trend in his music. Essentially, Glamb knows as much about what he’s doing at the time as we know about what he was doing when we listen to it—not much. But it ultimately coalesces, usually when he takes a look back at his songwriting later. “I’ll learn how I was feeling about stuff,” he says. - Columbia Spectator

Love Squad
Lerner Black Box Theater
Tonight & Saturday, 11 PM--Free

By now, everyone has heard the name Anton Glamb--or at least seen him in your facebook group. But if you haven't gotten enough, director Yuma Terada, CC '05 and the Columbia University Performing Arts League have turned his music into a full-length play. On his blog, Glamb describes it as "part-concert, part-party, part-play." The show debuted last night at Lerner Black Box, and runs through Sunday, and it features music from his album "Do It" and debuts his new single "Together to Go."
--Tess Carota - Columbia Spectator

Google Anton Glamb and you’ll learn that the Punahou Schools graduate is a sponsored skater who is currently enrolled at Columbia University. He was also voted second best college act in New York City at the Columbia vs. NYU Rock The Vote Battle of the Bands.

But online researche doesn’t begin to describe the onstage energy projected by Glamb, who retuns home fro a performance at thte Pussycat Lounge to celebrate the release of his first full-length album, "Do It!"

Glamb combines homemade electronic beats and lyrics to produce a sound that someone once described to him as "Prince mixed with Beck."

He admits his music has sprinklings of influences, which also include the Basement Jaxx and Jamiroquai.

"When I started of writing stuff, I tried to write like Jamiroquai," says Glamb. "But when I started recording it, I realized I didn’t have his voice.

"I Think production-wise my music sounds kind of quirky, kind of like the Basementt Jaxx stuff is," he says. "I listen to them all the time and I think they come through my music a little bit, but I try to put my own flair into it as well."

Sample his creations at www.cutefriendanton.com. --Marvin Nitta


Wave Waikiki, 1877 Kalakaua Ave, Tue 12/28, 18 & over, $5 for overs & $10 for unders, 941-0424

Honolulu Weekly, December 22-28, 2004 page 9
- Honolulu Weekly

Last we left you, (hanging on breathlessly I'm sure) we were urging the people to flock en masse to the house that Chane Wilson built a.k.a. Wave Waikiki a.k.a. The Grave for our cute friend and yours Anton Glamb's CD release party performance. Somehow all parties managed to make it in one piece and were treated to quite the spectacle. If you weren't there, you missed THE live stage performance of 2004, bar none. The musical stylings that our buddy Anton displayed on this monumental occasion were beyond comprehension. You ain't never heard no shit like this. Period. The crowd, primarily composed of skateboard types, hipster doofuses, and an incredibly mind boggling amount of nubile young flowers, savoringly ate up every glorious morsel that Chef Anton sensually served up. His debut CD "Do It" sold like macadamia nut hotcakes for ten bucks a pop after the show, and I was so absolutely blown away I bought two. If you didn't already get one, go get that shit. Happy music. Happy is good.

-Lars - downwithapb.com