Dirty Beaches
Stateless
4 November 2014
Zoo Music
4 stars out of 5
On October 27th, Alex Hungtai tweeted, “RIP DIRTY
BEACHES 2005-2014.” A week later we have the final Dirty Beaches album, an
instrumental LP titled Stateless. The
record is composed of four long ambient drone pieces, along the lines of Stars
of the Lid. Dirty Beaches convened as a duo for the recording, with Hungtai on
synth and saxophone, and Italian composer Vittorio Demarin on viola. All four
tracks consist of slowly shifting chords, circling around a motif like dark
comets, melting and freezing as they approach and retreat from the melodic
center.
In the opener, “Displaced,” Hungtai plays the saxophone as
if it were a duck honking through a tremolo pedal. The instrument sounds
completely futuristic and treated with layers of digital editing, even though
the recording is probably true to how the music sounded coming directly out of
the instrument itself. “Time Washes Away Everything” is a close approximation
of the shifting drones of Stars of the Lid, and like the other three tracks, it
sticks to a core group of notes. Each of these pieces gives the illusion of
being freely improvised when in reality they are very tightly focused on a few
central themes. That’s no small feat in a genre that has always had difficulty
in finding a balance between formlessness and the diatonic scale.
reviewed by Richard Krueger
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