Dan Friel toes the line of studied degradation on Ghost Towns. As though a sort of aural equivalent of the Dadaist’s ‘word salad’, his first full-length contains obscenities and extravagances of most every imaginable waste product of sound in its relentless destruction and reconstruction of its aura.
For better or worse, these noisette miniatures don’t hinge upon a principle of evil. In fact, all things being equal, they are quite amiable, even if they betray a penchant for audacious reworkings. The tracks are designed with a certain precision. The pieces never feel unfinished, and they normally flow into one another making the disc unlined by gaps, ridges or irregularities. On an individual basis, the pieces are concise, but not terse. Sounds generally don’t last longer than they need to – a work such as “Singing Sands” features a soft, sighing chorus melody, only to later have it menaced and liberated from its attractiveness by multilayered feedback and amplified junk. Inversely, “Buzzards” builds from a slowly evolving and multilayered slab of sampledelica, but then dashes of synth carry it out of itself onto firmer, more sensually satisfying grounds.
The primitive synth pop element that surfaces here does so time and again as the album moves along. Generally speaking, it is responsible for some of the most ear-catching sounds ensnared herein; evidence to the fact that, for all his flirtation with smoking, swaggering workouts, it’s Friel’s ability to feed and sustain fluctuating central pulses and strung-out song structures that affords the album some magnetism.
Max Schaefer
