In contrast to the sunnier nostalgia of Surroundings, The Winter Drones evokes a place of murky pine forests, snowbound hills and unquiet ghosts. Its structures breathe holistically, twisting around subliminally felt elegaic drones, microtonal inflections and pulses, achieving a combination of satiety and amnesia, without being afraid to follow the odd unexpected digression.
Sunken in a blurry, soft focus, most tracks glow with the freshness of its variations. The bodily warmth of warping analogue bass melodies is like the blush in a cluster of tape delay dustclouds and microedits found on “Distant Slight”; and, in like manner, the great whirling eddies of psychedelic texture transform pulse into endlessly malleable time on “Slow Grounding”.
While generally about atmosphere and intimacy, Dominic Dixon transcends such limitations by incorporating a certain musical dexterity into the arrangements. “Observation After Closedown” displays a glacially spooked quality, with incandescent ripples of sound culled from tape-reversed bells and resonant drones, but he simultaneously allows tightly controlled pulsations to combine themselves into organic clusters, which enable the work to be engaging, rather than simply something diffuse and abstract.
As though distant relatives, the remaining tracks are characterized by significant changes, both in density and tempo, and they are generally led by firm strides that veer into a variety of intoxicated realms. For all the slants and unaccustomed angles, each is also reasonably consistent with a certain well-formed identity. With all of this in mind, the albums blurred indeterminacy is turned to Dixon’s advantage, calling up an indistinct yet heightened sense of time and place.
Recently released on vinyl, Cloudcroft Mirror uses another penumbra of opiated drones to blur the lines between organic and synthetic construction techniques. The title track pairs slide guitar with backward drones redolent of dragging tides and sparse but carefully conceived digital accompaniment. “”Summit Loop”, the second of the two works presented here, sees to it that the guitar takes a backseat role to the wisps and swirls of densely processed analogue synthesizers. The interplay between these two aspects of Dixon’s sound allows this release to tread an efficacious path toward the subdued grandeur of an urban nocturne.
Max Schaefer
