(Another reviewer’s viewpoint!)
For The Young Person’s Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn the New York-based composer has flattened Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra into enigmatic, elongated drones, refined symphonies for the weary contemporary ear. The two CDs contains over two hours of music, twelve long, slowly evolving and extremely understated compositions, none of which outstay their welcome. Stars of the Lid is the most obvious parallel, but Dunn’s work is cleaner, more refined; we also catch glimpses of Gas, Jonathan Coleclough, Harold Budd and, in the subtlety of construction, Eliane Radigue.
Constructed from guitar, strings and brass, the latter captured at impromptu sessions with orchestral players, Dunn smears this material into warm, gently throbbing drones. For all the lack of distinction – actual instrumental gestures are difficult to determine – this is music of intense clarity and focus, not the blurred, crackly fog that too often results from digital processing. The first four tracks on disc one originally appeared on the download-only Fervency on Moodgadget (the remaining tracks were produced at the same time), and these are the most consistent, in that they demonstrate similarities in terms of timbre, duration and development, and consequently function as a unified suite. That said, the new works don’t stray much further.
‘Butel’ centres around a persistent and indeterminate low-end hum, around which higher-pitched whistled tones intrude and recede at a barely perceptible pace. ‘The Tributary (For Voices Lost)’ builds a smoky cloud from walls of brass, rich waves of sound that grow more sublimely beautiful with each Doppler-esque pass. Ironically perhaps, ‘There is No End to Your Beauty’ is less overtly beautiful, marginally, involving more menacing tones, a vaguely industrial growl which trickles, slowly, like molten metal.
The second disc is defined by even greater restraint, and estrangement, Dunn placing an invisible – inaudible? – barrier between the music and the listener. In this manner his work most closely resembles Radigue, particularly L’Ile Re-Sonante. The legacies on ‘Grab (And Its Lost Legacies)’, for example, are depicted as literally lost, all perceptible activity moving at a glacial crawl. ‘Last Minute Jest’ sets dull angles slowly bobbing, on still water, while ‘Sets of Four (Its meaning is Deeper than Its Title Implies)’ sets itself apart by foregrounding piano chords, fractured into faint, wispy shards. Dunn’s real success is in creating music that stimulates cerebral concerns but remains first and foremost sublimely beautiful; The Young Person’s Guide is an immense, immersive and irresistible album.
Joshua Meggitt
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