Rural Route No. 2 is the latest release by New York-based sound artist Kyle Bobby Dunn, a bite-sized 3″ appetiser after the daunting 2 hour+ The Young Persons Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn. That mammoth opus, recently reviewed here, was a towering document of pristine drones, minimally austere yet vast in scope, refracting the infinitesimal variations of Eliane Radigue through the haze of Thomas Koner. In addition to the more palatable duration, Rural Route No. 2 is also a more personal document, comprised of more welcoming sounds: two ten-minute+ pieces exploring Dunn’s memories of growing up in Calgary, Alberta.
‘Dissonant Distances’ features silken strands of gently hissing tones, lapping against one another like grey waves on a wintry beach. Other sounds slowly reveal themselves over the piece’s duration – faint chimes, a heavy undertow of bass – but these appear inconclusive, as vague, indistinct memories. ‘Serenium III’ opens in a more bucolic mood, heavenly choirs buried in fog, occasionally glimpsed amid glistening, metallic pads. Again, the building blocks ebb and flow, these almost blinding shards subsumed by harsher undercurrents. The way Dunn twists and folds these pieces recalls Ligeti, Atmospheres in the former, Lux Aeterna in the latter, although the earthiness is closer to Paul Schutze, or Eno’s On Land. If he’s not quite up to the standard of these titans he’s certainly on the right path, although I also feel there’s something missing here, a compromise against the intense refinement found in pieces such as ‘Grab (And Its Lost Legacies)’ and ‘Last Minute Jest’.
Joshua Meggitt
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