Labels: The Static Cult
Review by: Oli Saunders
‘The water’s of Earth are home to sharks’ are the opening words to this new Red Dunes record. A sort of weird and wonderful musical audiobook, it alternates some of the most miserable semi-monotone music you are ever likely to hear with a young boy providing facts about sharks (albeit over some rather eerie and unsettling background music itself). The previous album ‘Dawn She Waits’ performed a similar feat using dinosaurs, yet the two seem to be much more in chime here. Perhaps it’s the apparent convergence of the music towards John Argetsinger’s other project, The Scarecrow Frequency, that aids this.
The lo-fi murky experimental feel is a delight – you can even hear a metronome at the start of some of the songs which I find quite bizarre. To venture each song to be a swift cathartic outpouring of feelings, one after the other, would perhaps seem pretentious, but that’s how John’s music comes across to me. ‘Blue Fossils’ is maybe the pick of the bunch, a two minute soft repetitive but soothing song, almost what Neutral Milk Hotel would sound like if slowed down.
This record is only available as a download, freely available from the label website. With ‘Parton Kooper Planetarium’ due to release an LP on The Static Cult soon, things are looking good for this year. Dear John Argetsinger and Clay Parton, please keep writing and releasing music.
8th May 2011