Review Summary: Another album to get lost in
Somewhere along the four-minute mark of “There Is No End To Your Beauty”, Kyle Dunn loses me in his hollow, ethereal tones and textures. The confines of my room begin to evanesce into fuzzy, gray frames surrounding my vision; the distant, opaque television dialogue emanating from the floor below me becomes even more
abstracted – never has the show
Lost ever been so close to its title's definition, I must say; and I even forget that I was listening to anything at all to begin with. Sitting in my room staring at the silhouette of the brand-less floor lamp next to my bed, I become one with my currently frozen center of contemplation. Pressing, unyielding matters of the day finally seem to yield in my mind, a calm sense of peace ensues. As if a moment later, though, while I'm somewhere drifting in a hole of obscure thoughts there is a jerk, a
feeling, and I notice that I have to go to the bathroom – looking over at my computer clock, I realize that an hour and twenty minutes has just passed by me. The extended works of Kyle Dunn have seemingly come and gone in a mere number of seconds.
It’s funny, because on five other different tries at trying to absorb and take in Kyle Dunn’s swaying and delicate
A Young Person’s Guide To…, a similar event would take place where I would seemingly get lost in what I was listening to and lose track of the album's progression. The New York-based musician, filmmaker, Facebook-
rocker’s drone is as stubborn as it is easy to negotiate with, as complex as it is simple. Dreamlike memorization is felt through resounding notes and aural soundscapes - sometimes being built upon a sole note for tens of minutes - with nary a slight reprieve within this computer regurgitated brass, guitar, and strings-styled
reprieve. Listeners would never guess that the first four cuts of
A Young Person’s Guide To… are actually old material released in 2009 as the download-only album
Fervency, as the moods and shifts of notes and tranquil atmospheres are hardly ever interrupted or disjointed-sounding in their flow and synchronization. It’s as if the picture Dunn drew last year is just being filled in with more color, the frame just being further extended – one hour’s time extra, to be exact.
A Young Person’s Guide To… takes patience, really; there’s no way to get around it. It’s a lull, adrift; unyielding, tiresome - but it’s entirely worth the effort in the end. Such comparisons hit home with the more popular, house-name Stars Of The Lid mixed in with Celer, but Tim Hecker on a leash or a more serious The Dead Texan wouldn’t be too far off either. To be safe, however, just throw them all in a blender and drain the excess for your final product. It’s a shame that those most prepared and most likely to be receptive to Dunn are also the ones who will be the least likely to be surprised, though. After all, La Monte Young recorded one undying note after another years ago in the early 60s, and since then, the aforementioned genre leaders have been proving the innovator’s definition of drone music over and over again: “
the sustained tone branch of minimalism.” Kyle Dunn’s
A Young Person’s Guide To… is another album to take up the slowly burning torch that his contemporaries have been championing for years. They all may be running at slow speeds, but their flame has no chance of going out. After all, tones like Dunn’s just
never seem to end, continuing on for daunting lengths in succession - as if showing no signs of ever stopping.
Take that as you will.
