In 1934, John Dewey declared "...there are types of music, those most prized by connoisseurs, that demand special training to be perceived and enjoyed, and its devotees form a cult, so that their art is the most esoteric of all arts" (from The Varied Substance of the Arts, reprinted in Art as Experience).
The most obsessed music fetishists I know belong to the Church of (So-Called) Noise, a cadre that spends most of its time looking for a version of the Merzbox with 51, not 50, discs and collecting cassettes from some guy in Portland you've never heard of — because "he actually dies during this recording". But the most intriguing, often annoying, fervor this compulsion produces — more so than with any genre leeches, including House music fans with a copy of GarageBand — is, "I have a cockroach-filled guitar amp, a crusty mixer with the back ripped off and a RadioShack microphone. Wolf Eyes started out with less; I could totally make this." Unfortunately, the only "special training" they possess is the ability to flip "On" switches, scrunch up their faces and not bleed out their ears while enduring a volume twice that of a jumbo jet take-off. In other words, this empowered, unchecked DIY effort arguably yields a lot of lackluster crap and sub par clones of The Masters with the only merit being, "That was fun, my gear caught on fire". (Spend a few years with this subject, come back with disagreeing results and I will give you my copy of the Merzbox.)
Unfortunately, Olivier Dumont's work will appear in the same bin with the aforementioned hacks, as his work arrives from said universe (a guitar, "a mass of cables, amplifiers and lo-fi tape equipment"). However, Living in Holes and Disused Shafts is for fans tired of simple Zen Through Pain drones and walls of sound. Sure, there is plenty of sludge: Dumont's work is still a gnarled Cyclops, but one dressed in a suit and teaching a Humanities class at La Sorbonne, so to speak.
Similar to Debussy's larger works (i.e. Nocturnes, La Mer), "Room 237" and "Should We Move On Or Stay Safely Away?" project as gigantic gobs on the surface; but upon closer scrutiny possess myriad bustling activity. Further, the works lean towards formal construction, following a goal of almost harmonic modulation, ebbing and flowing, tensing and releasing amidst a charcoal-to-midnight colored ensemble. Sandwiched in-between these two, "Peep Show Arcade" is a manic hammer-on exploration of high frequencies and bursts of almost-intelligible dialog all coated in a raw-yet shimmering metallic polish; though Dumont purportedly eschews his guitar for this track, it recalls a meeting of Fennesz's microscopic glitch and Melt Banana axe man Ichirou Agata's pitch-shifted feedback. On the sixteen-minute "R-Grey", Dumont waltzes between a thorny, pulse-garnering overdrive and a counterpoint of stunted squeals, holding the reigns of a chariot of demons and sonically recreating the act of containing an unstable pressure cooker. Again, it is Dumont doing the work, twisting knobs and yanking levers to keep the journey and musical austerity away from stagnancy; during the quieter moments (the latter half of the piece), he shapes even the tape hiss with an elegant manipulation of compression and EQ. Dumont ends the disc with the title track, a contrasting mulch of electrical dither, sub-harmonics, a subtle hint of twang and the clank of magnified strings against "prepared" soundboards, an earned repose after the erstwhile relative ferocity.
Expounding on his perception of music, Dewey writes, "A sound is itself threatening, whining, soothing, depressing, fierce, tender, soporific, in its own quality". Immediate and inviting yet harsh and inflamed, Dumont's emotional, dynamic impact is a textbook example of this remark.
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