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Last month Mr. Kyle Bobby Dunn was kind enough to send me a copy of his new EP, Rural Route #2, but I had the busiest November anyone has ever had, ever, so I am just now getting around to reviewing it. Apologies to Mr. Dunn.After Dunn's last outing, a two disc compilation that contained nearly two hours of material, this EP feels quite short by comparison. There are two tracks, totaling just over twenty minutes of music. While this may sound disappointing to some, I hasten to comment that it is a very satisfying twenty minutes. Ambient music is a genre in which it can be quite difficult to distinguish oneself from the crowd. It's very easy to make bad ambient, but very hard to make something unique and personal. Either you go dark and sound like Lustmord or you go light and sound like Stars of the Lid. Dunn, however, has successfully managed to carve out some middle ground here, sounding like no one but himself.The lovely thing about these two tracks is that they are spacious enough to allow the listener room to insert his own thoughts into the music. Many artists falter in trying to create a sonic landscape, and end up crowding out their audience. Here, on the other hand, one gets the impression of standing in a vast open plain. To the North is a city of glistening metal, curiously silent from this distance; to the South a mountain range stands shrouded in mist; to the East, sharp cliffs overlook a churning, overcast sea; to the West there is a forest of stately, antidiluvian pines. There rea landmarks to be sure, but we are allowed enough freedom to choose our own path. That is what makes a good ambient record.Despite its brevity, I believe Rural Route #2 to be a vast improvement over his last release. Dunn seems to have really found his voice here, and I would recommend this record to anyone seeking knew vitality in a genre that easily becomes stale and repetitive.
Kyle Bobby Dunn is a Brooklyn based sound artist who enjoys creating long, minimal pieces of atmospheric ambient music. "A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn" is his most large scale release to date, a sprawling set of tracks that unfold over two discs and runs for almost two hours. Listening to such lengthy works in their entirety is usually a daunting task, placing large demands on the listener's patience and attention span, but in this case the music is such that it can function as a pleasant backdrop just as easily as an active listening experience.So what does the music sound like? Well, it actually sounds a lot like Stars of the Lid. Warm droning textures fade in and out over the course of the lengthy tracks, evoking tranquil thoughts of far away places where there are no deadlines and nothing to worry about. Dunn seems to have embraced Eric Satie's concept of furniture music, and his compositions sit nicely in the corners of any room, unobtrusively coloring the atmosphere in shades of beige.There is little variation in sound across the album's running time, although a few splashes of restrained piano, tasteful electronic swirls, and some field recordings of animals and water make for some nice flavor here and there. The one spot where the sense of profound calm is disturbed lies at the end of the second track "The Tributary (For Voices Lost)," which concludes with a deep, deep bass rumble that may shake the teeth right out of your head (or at least blow out your speakers.) The album confusingly ends with a human voice persistantly asking "Looking at yourself?" to which another voice confidently replies "Yeah."
Overall, this is a record that will appeal to those of you who feel that modern ambient has become far too "busy" and would like to see a return to the Brian Eno-Harold Budd roots of the genre. The sounds are very soothing and enjoyable, and the length is such that by the end of it you will almost certainly be lulled into a relaxed state of inner peace. Certainly one of the more meditative records I've come across in recent years.
