Sara Glojnarić is a Croatian composer who utilises electronics, tape elements, and drum kits in her bombastically dramatic, quirky, to atmospherically modern compositions. Pure Bliss is a seven-track album- taking in compositions from between 2017 and 2022, nicely highlighting the scope & variation of her work.

The releases appear on the always dependable Kairos- an Austrian label focusing on releasing the most interesting & creative within the modern classical and modern composition genres. The disc is presented in the label's house-style four-panel digipak- with a glossy thirty-page inlay booklet- with English & German texts regarding Ms Glojnarić, the pieces featured, and the players of said pieces.
She has been active since the 2010s. Her work explores pop culture, including its aesthetics, socio-political impact, collective memory, nostalgia and the intricate web of pop cultural data and their interactions.

The release opens with  “Sugarcoating #4” This nearly nine-and-a-half-minute work is from 2022. It brings together bombastic and dramatic orchestration stabs, with tappingly reeling -to-gallopingly churning percussion. With a few sudden/brief dips in pace for more stripped-back vibe and shadowy/pared-back percussion moments.

We have the rapid soprano warbling, quirky percussive run detail, and slightly glitching tape elements of  2019’s “Artefacts #2”. There’s the title track- which shifts between mellow beat craft ‘n’ ambient glow, onto orchestral to piano-bound glitch ‘n’ haze with stretched/ choppy female vocalising. 

Towards the end of the album, we have 2020’s “Latitudes” with electro/video-scaped prepared piano tones. The track is made up of playful cascading tone rushes, brief glowing 80’s synth sustains, and quirkily hack ‘n’ knock.

Pure Bliss is a rewardingly unpredictable ride into modern composition- with the electronics, tape elements, drum kit tones, and of course, Glojnarić’s blackbird-like genre dipping composition really creating something quite unequal.