FaltyDL
In the Wild
11 August 2014
Ninja Tune
4 stars out of 5
In the Wild is
Drew Lustman’s fourth LP under the name FaltyDL, and second with Ninja Tune. The
album is a scenic tour through the electronica wilderness of Lustman’s world.
The music doesn’t follow any sort of linear progression—there’s no heavy-handed
building up and letting go of tension; indeed, the stops and starts are
disorienting and at times unnerving. And this is the point. In the wild, there’s
no grand narrative, no logical steps which must follow each other in an
established order, no sense which has to be made in order for things to be absorbed
and understood. There’s just trees and rocks and things that want to eat you.
Even within individual tracks Lustman questions and rejects
the norms of typical musical constructions. During “Nine,” for example, the
percussion doesn’t even keep time with itself, creating the image of a
rattlesnake, lurking unseen among the stunted desert pines and dwarf cactuses,
ready to fill you with its poison. It’s not a narrative of man vs. nature—it’s
not a morality play of any kind. It’s just how things are. If the listener can’t
adjust his expectations to music that doesn’t fit into traditional listening
patterns, this is not the fault of Lustman.
Lustman’s records become more impressive as he moves further
away from beats and deeper into the avant-garde. Completely bizarre and yet
charming tracks like “In the Shit” see Lustman essentially creating brand new
genres all over the place. Where beats do occur, such as the frantic, warped
two-step ditty “Dånger,” they’re not a reassuring constant; rather, they’re a
worrying dark cloud on the horizon, threatening to create a flash flood in your
already harsh desert world. You’d best take shelter if you want to hold onto
your precious narrative.
reviewed by Richard Krueger
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