Dust Volume 8, Number 4
OHYUNG
Is this normal? After two years of upheaval, the world seems to finding equilibrium again, at least if you squint to avoid looking too hard at what’s going on in Ukraine. So we’re going out again on the regular, wearing masks (and you should, too), but otherwise like always, and oh my, are a lot of bands out on the road these days. A lot of them are putting out records, too, and as usual, we make an attempt to catch up with Dust, our monthly collection of short reviews. Read here for our take on country covers and Italian punk, crusty black metal and cosmic metal, improvisatory collaborations and fresh interpretations of music from farflung cultures. Contributors this time included Tim Clarke, Justin Cober-Lake, Jonathan Shaw, Bryon Hayes, Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly and Chris Liberato.
Caleb Dailey — Warm Evenings, Pale Mornings: Beside You Then (Alien Transistor / Moone)
Warm Evenings, Pale Mornings: Beside You Then by Caleb Dailey
Moone Records boss Caleb Dailey worked on this collection of covers of old country songs with some notable musicians, including Deerhoof’s John Dieterich, Nicholas Krgovich, and Kyle Field (Little Wings). At eight tracks clocking in at just over half an hour, it’s a short and lovingly rendered collection that rambles charmingly, featuring songs originally written by a range of country-rock luminaries, including Gram Parsons, Gordon Lightfoot and Blaze Foley. Even if you’re not familiar with the originals, all the songs sound appropriately well-worn and comforting, giving the listener space and reassurance to nestle in their melancholy. Dailey keeps things at a woozy, syrup-thick tempo, his low voice sounding like a 45rpm record accidentally played at 33 1/3. Though the songs unfurl slowly and simply, there’s plenty of space to weave hypnotic details into the mix. Early standout “Brass Buttons” swirls with lap steel, banjo and harmonium behind Dailey’s lackadaisically strummed acoustic guitar. “Dreaming My Dreams With You” features sparkling vibraphone over thick beds of organ and bass, and “If You Could Read My Mind” pulses with distant cosmic synths. Then, on closer “If I Could Only Fly,” featuring plaintive lead vocals from The Notwist’s Markus Acher, the album achieves lift-off amid a storm cloud of distortion, followed by a restatement of the song’s theme on piano by Dailey’s mum. Lovely.
Tim Clarke
Deaf Lingo — Lingonberry (Lövely)
Italy's Deaf Lingo returns for their second album with as much energy as ever. The punk rockers add some increased melodicism to Lingonberry compared to their initial releases, but they haven't slowed anything down. After a heavier intro, single “Push It” has drifts toward skate punk as vocalist Sandro Specchia rants in favor of laziness. The track's irony lies not just in its decidedly not-lazy tempo, but also in its resistance. While the cut might ostensibly be about doing nothing, it considers that inaction as a form of resistance. Much of the album follows in this line, pairing a few different punk and alt-rock styles with concerns about disaffection or alienation. The group sounds its best when it leans into its poppier influences, but it would benefit — especially on its brighter tunes — from more separation in its production. The sound gets just a little muddier than suits the songs. Even so, Deaf Lingo feels like a band on its way up, catching its songwriting groove and finding its way with growing assurance.
Justin Cober-Lake
Feral Light — Psychic Contortions (I, Voidhanger)
Psychic Contortions by FERAL LIGHT
At its best, Feral Light’s new LP Psychic Contortions recalls the tuneful, crusty black metal of that terrific demo from Loss of Self that circulated about a decade ago, or the most blackened and melodic moments in Nux Vomica’s epic crust anthems. All of which suggests — accurately so — that Feral Light isn’t writing or playing anything particularly ground-breaking on this record, but the Minneapolis-based duo does this sort of thing quite well. See “Wells of Blackness,” which may have a title that’s just a little bit on the nose; it also has a riff with just enough roil, and crusty production that coats the music with just enough grime. The band has been kicking around since 2015, and Psychic Contortions is by far the best record they’ve released. “Self Disavow” might be the band’s best song, yearning and crunching in equal measure, and given over to intemperate spells of blasting intensity. If you like some blackened ash in your crust, give this a spin.
Jonathan Shaw
High Alpine Hut Network — 727/16 (Ansible Editions)
727 / 16 by High Alpine Hut Network
The Toronto-based Idée Fixe imprint has spun off a sister label. With a name originating in science fiction, Ansible Editions is true to its mission to explore the jazz cosmos and adjacent sonic galaxies. The imprint launched with an introductory batch of three editions, and this pair of tracks from High Alpine Hut Network is certainly the most cosmic of the lot. Comprising multi-instrumentalists Christopher Shannon, Benjamin Pullia and Jason Bhattacharya, this trio explores the intersection of Berlin school kosmische, deep house and jazz-infected hard funk. For this, their debut effort, HAHN enlisted the help of friends. The collaborative roster includes pianist Robin Hatch, Tobin Hopwood on guitar, percussionists Lauren Runions and Nathan Vanderwielen and the lush reeds of Joseph Shabason. “727” is a voyage that originates in the cosmos before strutting into electric Miles territory and eventually landing in the club. The snaky “16” is a bass-forward affair, bolstered by Hopwood’s limber guitar exorcisms and a propulsive percussive pulse. Overall HAHN keeps it exciting and extraterrestrial, a winning combination.
Bryon Hayes
Instruments Of Happiness — Slow, Quiet Music In Search Of Electric Happiness (Redshift)
Slow, Quiet Music in Search of Electric Happiness by Instruments of Happiness
Sometimes, the times catch up with you. Tim Brady of Montreal has been working with guitar ensembles of carrying sizes for nearly forty years, culminating in a production in 2014 entitled, Instruments of Happiness — 100 Guitares Électriques. Four years on, he had an economizing notion: why not put four guitarists in a large, reverberant space, and let the room do some of the work? Brady and three other guitarists — Jonathan Barriault, Simon Duchesne, and Francis Brunet-Tucotte — presented the first performance of this four-piece sequence of roughly quarter hour-long, commissioned pieces in a Montreal church in February, 2020. Obviously, follow-up performances were not an immediate option, but what better year than 2020 to record a small number of spread-out musicians? It’s kind of a shame that the music couldn’t be made immediately available, because folks enduring cabin fever might have found comfort in the quartet’s evocations of expansiveness. E-bow elongations and a seven-second digital delay, which duplicates the original space’s echo, impart a sonic experience that corresponds to the album cover image of the eventual meeting of ocean and cloud cover.
Bill Meyer
Interesting Hobbies Club — Spring Cleaning (Self-Released)
Spring Cleaning by Interesting Hobbies Club
It's not entirely clear what would qualify as an interesting hobby, but I’m guessing that day drinking, buying too many records on Bandcamp Friday and jogging the occasional 5K would not. Perhaps forming a florid, emotionally stirring indie rock band would make the cut, perhaps not, but these four LA musicians have been at it, regardless, for two albums now. And why not? Their second, Spring Cleaning (the first was recorded as Zero Degree), spins in indolent circles, a slow rock jangle lit up by the near-operatic tenor of front person Jules Caspole, who swoops and wails and roars in a volatile, vibrato-laced timbre. The songs this time are tinged with reminiscence, the best “One Year Ago Today,” a country-rocking lament for the girl that got away. Caspole sings ruefully of finding an old photograph of a live-in lover, prompting memories of domestic pleasures: cooking together, planting a garden, dancing in the backyard. The band twangs and rollicks in two-stepping time, and the whole thing puts a gloss on ordinary life that seems a little brighter, a little more meaningful than it usually is. “Middle of the 110” likewise throws a bolt of electricity into an indie rock shuffle, letting concentrated feeling lift it out of the ordinary.
Jennifer Kelly
Kostnatení — Ohen Horí Tam, Kde Padl (Mystíkaos)
Oheň hoří tam, kde padl by Kostnatění
We are told that D. Lyons, sole member of Kostnatení, has created this record by adapting traditional Turkish folk songs for dissonant, lush and very effective black metal arrangements. Knowing nothing about Turkish folk music, this reviewer cannot comment on the veracity of the claim, nor can he opine on the nature of the tribute or obscenity these musical renditions have brought into the world. But taken on its face, this is a terrific record. The playing is supple and forceful, the tunes are weirding earworms, the sensibility and scale of things somehow mystical and grand. To be sure, there’s something interesting, if perverse, about using black metal to interpret the folk traditions of a nation that has experienced such volatile relations to religious faith — to say nothing of black metal’s more customary deployments by seriously pale dudes with even more serious investments in the lore of northern whiteness (Viking metal, anyone?). This, by marked contrast, is the black metal of the Global South, played by a guy last located by the internet in Tennessee. Say what? Beats me. Play the music.
Jonathan Shaw
James Krivchenia — Blood Karaoke (Reading Group)
Blood Karaoke by James Krivchenia
Though you can hear clear links between the music of Big Thief and recent solo albums by frontwoman Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek, drummer and producer James Krivchenia’s solo music is another matter altogether. Like having dozens of internet browser tabs open at once and switching randomly between them to sample whatever music might happen to be playing at the time, Blood Karaoke is a disorientating, bewildering and occasionally very funny listen. The easiest comparison is probably Oneohtrix Point Never, as the sounds of experimental electronica, vaporwave, and nu-metal collide, occasionally derailed by daft passages of yacht rock, smooth jazz or easy listening. It’s all very cleverly put together and can, at times, introduce moments of unexpected beauty and tenderness. However, as a front-to-back listening experience, it’s likely to leave you feeling a little frazzled and insane.
Tim Clarke
Nyles Lannon — Pressure (Badman)
PRESSURE by Nyles Lannon
Nyles Lannon played with Film School in the early aughts and has made several highly regarded solo albums, including Chemical Friends, named best folktronica album of 2004 by SF Weekly. Pressure was originally released in 2007; here Badman celebrates its 15th birthday with an expanded, remastered version with the tracks remixed to Lannon’s specifications (he never liked the original version). Not having heard Pressure the first time around, it’s hard to say how much the alterations helped, but this is a very good album of mostly acoustic indie folk-pop. Lannon’s voice is high and gentle, not too different from Elliott Smith, the mood bittersweet and the guitar/electronic accompaniments unassumingly pretty. “Better with Nothing” eddies and swirls around a melancholic melody, its pace quickened by scratchy, shaken percussion, its contours defined by bright, lucid guitar lines. A little bell rattles at the bridge as fuzz guitars spin off into psychedelic inquiry, the drama flares, then Lannon pulls it all back into the kind of tune you sing to yourself on rainy days just because.
Jennifer Kelly
OHYUNG — imagine naked! (NNA Tapes)
imagine naked! by OHYUNG
Asian-American artist OHYUNG generously presents the receptive listener with nearly two hours of sparse, reflective ambient music on imagine naked! Mostly conceived and created across a single 72-hour period, the album is book-ended by 15-minute opener “my torn cuticles!” and 37-minute closer “releases like gloves!” Based on its duration alone, the album does feel like quite a commitment. However, step inside these welcoming musical environments and feel time slip away as the album’s unifying aesthetic becomes cumulatively transportive. Occasionally there are hints of Aphex Twin’s early records (“to fill the quiet!”), Satie’s minimal piano works (“yes my weeping frame!”), and Eno’s process-based experiments, such as Discreet Music. The album certainly fits Eno’s specification that ambient be “as ignorable as it is interesting” — play imagine naked! in the background, and let it gently color your mood, or don some headphones, listen closely, and become lulled by the music’s hypnotic repetition and deeply grained textures.
Tim Clarke
Sote — Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran (Sub Rosa)
Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran by Sote
Iranian producer Ata Ebtekar composes in two different modalities. His electroacoustic constructions incorporate sounds from the traditional instruments of his homeland. Alternatively, he eschews acoustic instrumentation to focus on electronic synthesis itself. Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran falls into the latter category, although the sheer physicality of the music belies its purely electronic origins. Mined from the same vein as 2020’s MOSCELS, this album is full of highly visceral, almost aggressive sounds modeled in clouds of electrons. Opener “Forced Absence” features the assault of machine gun percussion and collapsing clockwork mechanisms on unsuspecting string arpeggios that resemble harp strums. The urgent, almost video game-like rhythm of “I’m Trying But I Can’t Reach You Father” appears to originate from an orchestra of baroque instruments. That track’s successor, the gentle yet emotional “Life,” emulates a string quartet robbed of all its bows. Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran is Ebtekar’s most personal collection of material thus far. He’s asking us to endure both the majesty and the noise that lie at its core. This is a challenge that’s worth accepting.
Bryon Hayes
The Web of Lies — Nude with Demon (Wrong Speed)
Nude With Demon by The Web of Lies
For better — and, in one instance, for worse — on Nude with Demon, Edwin Stevens and Neil Robinson pull moves that you don’t quite expect them to pull. The Scottish duo let their garage groove swing like a pendulum on “Receiver,” summoning the spirits of LAMPS and A-Frames, but they gussy the sound up with sly, folk-rock half-licks. Now we know what that sounds like, you’ll catch yourself thinking, and you’ll be damned: it works. As does “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” which chugs along like Spacemen 3 towards a tunnel through which it doesn’t quite fit. When someone finally yanks the emergency brake, it’s already much, much too late, and the track scratches, scrapes and squeals towards a comically slow halt lasting a full couple of minutes. It’s not the metaphorical train driver I want to go back in time and shake awake, then, given the chance; it’s whoever voted the throwaway “Best Friend” onto the album’s track list. Batting in the cleanup spot, the otherwise innocuous Silver Apples-style ditty stops the record’s momentum dead in its, ahem, tracks, as one bestie answers the other’s mumbled monotone call by repeating the title phrase, ad nauseam, in a cartoonish car horn voice that’s frankly exhausting. Luckily, the one tune is not enough to derail the album as a whole, which nonetheless has the potential to become a favorite of the year, for those who like to smile and nod along to the sounds of loud, off-kilter guitars and humans doing their thing.
Chris Liberato
Wet Tuna — Warping All by Yourself (Three-Lobed)
Warping All By Yourself by Wet Tuna
Matt Valentine’s space grooves take on more of an organic texture in Warping All by Yourself, at least compared to the wigged-out electronics of 2019’s Water Weird. “Raw Food” arises out of the sound of waves, then shuffles off in a twilight meadow hum, electric guitars sparking wild sprays of sonic color into a lulling haze. “Ain’t No Turning Back,” is funkier, faster and more playful, a bit of Zappa in its out there zings and blurts and pulses, a touch of Royal Trux in its nodding, dissolving choruses. “Sweet Chump Change,” bumps and rolls like a 1970s jazz-funk-fusion epic transported somehow to the fertile hollows of rural New England. Everything spirals in a dizzying, cosmic way, but nothing rushes. You could be here all week without moving. Valentine works mostly alone, bringing in acid folk compatriots like Samara Lubelski, Mick Flower, Doc Dunn and (his partner) Erika Elder for communal touches, but essentially following his own spirit through classic rock, soul, kosmiche music and funk. The whole experience seems like one of those changling folk tales, where if you eat the food, even a little bit, you’ll stay in the enchanted woods forever.
Jennifer Kelly
Joe Williamson / Dennis Egberth — The Great Escape Plan (Tilting Converter)
Joe Williamson Dennis Egberth - The Great Escape Plan by Joe Williamson Dennis Egberth
When escape is the plan, it behooves the planner to avoid notice. This runs counter to the motivation for many musicians, which is to make sure that the audience’s neck and ears are craned in their direction. The tension between this intentions is the crux of encounter between two Stockholm-based musicians, percussionist Dennis Egberth and double bassist Joe Williamson. It is a studio recording, so the players’ needs for attention had to be met by each other. Their readiness to listen is evident though-out the album’s two vinyl-sized sections (titled, appropriately, “Plan A” and “Plan B”), and it contributes to the complementarity of these performances. Each muted cymbal tap, sizzling brush strike, thwack of the bass’ body or rustle of its bow is the punctuating gesture that completes what the other man plays. Hints of melody and rhythm arise discretely from constellations of mutating sound, like departing parties sticking their heads up to see if the coast is clear.
Bill Meyer
Eri Yamamoto, Chad Fowler, William Parker, Steve Hirsh — Sparks (Mahakala)
Sparks by Eri Yamamoto, Chad Fowler, William Parker, Steve Hirsh
These four musicians had never played all together before, and they made no plans about where their collaboration would go or what it would sound like once they convened in a room, post-COVID, in New York City. Yamamoto, the classically trained pianist steeped in improvisatory jazz, had worked with bassist Willam Parker before. Chad Fowler, the reedist and proprietor of Mahakala records, has played in a variety of configurations with drummer Steve Hirsh. They call what they’re doing “improvised folk music,” but, really, it’s four skilled practitioners listening hard, finding synchonicity, then careening away from that accord into a wholly new set of considerations. It’s a wild ride, sometimes pensive and beautiful, with sweet, well-considered piano chords framed by bowed and plucked bass reverberations, sometimes turbulent and quick, drums kicking up furious eddies of swirling dust, saxello blowing wildly over the top. None of these principals are averse to finding the still, beautiful center, in long haunting sax tones or vibrating throbs of bass, but nor are they afraid to catch the exhilarating edge of chaos, hammering, squealing, thumping, pounding to stay on top of the wave. How beautiful is it then, when Yamamoto’s clear liquid runs of piano tumble over the rough tumult of Hirsh’s skittering, striated layers of percussion in “Taiko” or when Fowler’s saxophone swaggers across a punch-drunk melody in “Sparks,” peeling back a pristine tone to see what’s raw and ugly underneath. Sparks fly, indeed.
Jennifer Kelly
Young Guv — Guv III (Run for Cover)
GUV III by Young Guv
Radiant power pop a la Teenage Fanclub, Guv III careens in trebly sweet tunefulness over spiked and raucous guitar work. Guv proprietor Ben Cook wrote this first of two COVID-era albums in the New Mexican desert, surrounded by stunning natural beauty. Yet the songs burst like Sour Patch candies with acid-sweetness. Guitars slash with New Wave swagger in “It’s Only Dancing” and pace with coiled Nick Lowe-ish tension in “Only Want to See U tonight,” as giddy pop vocals swirl and eddy around their contours. I’ve been listening to Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend lately for no reason whatsoever, and this is in the same power pop family, soft and hard, yearning and joyful at the same time.
Jennifer Kelly
