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Bisection: Dean Blunt/Dirty Beaches DEAN BLUNT: THE REDEEMER
DIRTY BEACHES DRIFTERS/LOVE IS THE DEVIL
Bisection
Back when I had unspooled audio tape draped on my ceiling and walls, I had the kind of time afforded to one who could spend the time hanging tape as decor. What appeal did the intestine links of Kris Kross singles flapping lazily in the smoke ring breeze have, what did it signify to me? Splayed against a white wall, the tendrils sorta resembled A snapshot of static drawn in through the antenna of my color tv. If I held a cigarette to the end of the tether, the cellophane would ignite and burn up to the ceiling as a fuse. WARNING:DO NOT TRY WITH VHS TAPE. Don’t try with any tape.
I could really listen to a record then. Or cassette. Really dig into the thing, live in it. Memorize the lyrics. Act out the lyrics. Yes, this is something to do. the Fuckin Wall Side A Side B one tape. Ignoring the robotic arms of the boxy three disc CD Changer because I only had a dub. First world problem. I’d sit rapt and listen to the whole damn thing after school, the sunlight draining from the room as I descended deep into the thin ice and fascist wormfood of rock star hell. The anguish I can’t even fuck these groupies cause I’;m so high, you can lip synch that and rock back and forth like the frantic rocking of a Pink Floyd mental patient or how Scott Weiland went fetal clutchy fists during Creep Unplugged. But the big moment, of course, was “the Trial.” When I listened to the trial I had to stub out my cigarette because my vigorous gesturing and quasi Kabuki choreography was liable to come into contact with the aforementioned tape and burn my mom’s house down. I’d seen the cartoon, too, so I knew how to impersonate Roger Water’s little kinks. I could put a hand on my hip playing the spurned ex-wife because Roger was doing the heavy lifting by singing like a chick. Then the sneering headmaster, wasted potential crazee, the final admonishment of a defecating judge, man that shit had some life to it! TEAR DOWN THE WALL!
I’m pretty dense, too. I couldn’t figure out if he commits suicide or just accepts the crazy. Ambiguous. Better listen to it again. And that loop continued for a couple of months when I fake played my Squire to Portrait of an American Family and so on into oblivion.
I feel like Dean Blunt (THE REDEEMER) might have little moments like this too, before the skills and talents fully manifested or the expressive mode was unknowable at the time. Blunt has progressed through a recent succession of records each with a different flirtation of style in the sphere of electronic dub. The first record I heard was BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL. The tracks are named numerically and the cover art is the logo of EBONY magazine. Pitchfork named “2” best new music and it’s the track that I dig the most, too. At 2:14 it flirts with my definition of even being a song (my metric is the length of “I, Me, Mine “from Beatles Anthology Three). It sounds cheap to describe Inga Copeland’s singing as “druggy” or “syrupy” but that’s where it lumbers in that semi-conscious prom queen kind of way.
On THE NARCISSIST II ,which may be one of my favorite album titles ever, cause it’s only slightly more clever than a debut act releasing GREATEST HITS (cause what’s better than being a narcissist? Being 2 of em.) Dean Blunt gives into narcissism and sings. He can’t really do it, but that’s never stopped anyone and shouldn’t. Here he conducts scotchguard one-acts THE POD style, distorted shrieks and pouty laments behind a crusty distorted effect. It’s the kind of chronological and free edited sound of tapes left on to brap or for delay experiments to write themselves.
Now his new one, THE REDEEMER, is Blunt having the confidence of a real narcissist adds the grandiose treatment, sound movie Pink Floyd/Roger Waters style. His vocals come through clearer, reminiscent of Rog but still distorted and disaffected like David Thrussel of Snog. The beats are incredible when present, satisfying like early DJ Shadow and groove is fantastic and he fucks with harp glissando and piano solo for flourish. This does feel like Blunt’s widest palette. He plays the joke a little on the nose withthe angelic simulated by organ chorals, but when there’s a spiritual dude like D’EON already laying down that kind of thing, it plays a little light, especially for a record you’re not sure is LAUGHING AT YOU.The album art depicts hands folded in prayer, but it doesn’t feel like redemption and smacks of esigesis Like with THE NARCISSIST II, it kind of feels like he’s mocking me and making good shit at the same time. And someone would only call it shit because it feels so unfinished and that kind of verbal barb would be just the kind of thing to provoke a reticent man to peek over the edge. Blunt throws in the vocal samples (confused woman leaving a rambling message, ocean waves(I picture the low sine of a west coast gangster contemplating the water), New Year’s Eve and the bells. There’s a movie for this somewhere like My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult or an art(y) film like THE WALL. The actual REDEEMER is Joanne Robertson’s vocal on the straightforward “Imperial Gold” but even this recalls the pastoral folk of “Nobody Home.” THE WALL references probably aren’t fair, but the thing feels like the vibe that record pulled off: Ego run amok surrounded by devil womens and just get me a fucking Steinway so I can write this songsuite already. I always liked how Floyd’s “Nobody Home” ends with an unfinished lyric, but it was a song by my definition. Blunt’s are short scribbles that I think will become way more interesting in extrapolated context like punctuating two unconnected strands, a rapskit between a random playlist that spit out Norman Greenbaum and is queuing up Slowdive.
Which, incidentally, came to mind as I was listening to “I dream in neon” on Dirty Beaches double DRIFTERS/LOVE IS THE DEVIL, the flatulent groove of “Spirit in the Sky” (and since I’m an atheist I like to imagine a Space Bus kinda like the Winnebago but trailing rainbow vapor trails like Magical Mystery Tour goin up to the spirit in the sky where I wanna go when I die) mixed with the dirge guitar of SOUVLAKI. Eno produced a song on that Slowdive record, and Dirty Beaches definitely dig some Eno My first hint? They have the fucking word “Beach” in their name which everyone knows is Eno’s natural habitat when the cycle completes reverts into landcrab abyss mode (read your appendices). “Casino Lisboa” is Alan Vega on MY LIFE WITH THE BUSH OF GHOSTS which is as awesome as it sounds. The washing machine pulse propels DRIFTERS with the kind of clenched teeth rigidity that Suicide records invoke, but fortunately Frippertronics are allowed to unfold over the mire and consistently burrow themselves into bubbling volcanic pools or insect infested cessbogs. The Tension relents somehere around LOVE IS THE DEVIL but where the split is located is not entirely clear. Probably right around “Greyhound at Night” where despondent saxophones honk over a Phil Collins-esque cymbol meditation. I like“This is not my City”’s Lesliespun koifish piano splashes that reside in what Lester Bang’s called the (in reference to ENO) “Still waters that don’t necessarily run deep” which is pretty okay criticism for when these kinds of pieces veer too far to the cinematic/ passive .
Further tape manipulation is explored, but in the touch and go manner afforded the time to listen to these records, to really get inside them. It works as a synthesis of Eno’s DISCREET MUSIC, in which summation is ok. Ambient records, beside falling asleep to, by definition aren’t supposed to have the buzz of a DRIFTER and singletracks shouldn’t have to be listened to for 135 minutes in order to grasp them. Mostly these pieces work because Dirty Beaches don’t seem to be directing a movie in the same fashion that Dean Blunt is. This plays more like a Jonny Greenwood soundtrack.
The thing about The WALL, is that for all its glut and righteousness and disco appropriation (YES, another brick in the wall pt.2 sounds like a fucking disco song), it was largely built of song type songs.
THE WALL worked consistently for fans because they could act out those silly dramatic scenes whilst wearing a cape in under the Xmas lights of their bedrooms (there were dozens of us).
Blunt works largely with the literal but he’s too obtuse or stubborn or smart to let us in on the joke.
Beaches, when not cutting you in the subway, are drawing silent silver planes in their faraway Mosquito Coast brewer’s lagoon.