Dale Berning builds Reichian loops out of chiming bells and windy, metallic clatter on his debut effort, The Horse and Camel Stories. The atmosphere is very much that of a fairy-tale, the air warmed by a sandy hum and maintained by a sense of austerity. The tales are presented in a minimal fashion, largely stripped of melodic flesh, and adorned with deep chimes and flitting electronic confetti punctuating the silent places in between the gently reverberating acoustic noises.
The sparse, endless motion of the glowing synths, altered with subtle filter effects, and highlighted by the sweet clarity of a nursery rhythm, is at times transfixing. All the same, the pieces run easily into one another, and eventually come to sound surprisingly flabby and ungainly, despite the nod towards minimalism.
Compositions meet with better results when lava-like low end drones are dipped in a bee’s nest of grating static and form interminable circles that seduce like the dizzying motion of a whirlpool. The work knows few layers, but much of the album is without a trace of human intervention, and in this virginal state, its idealized twilight atmosphere and rose-tinted nostalgia is often becoming.
Max Schaefer
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