Dust Dive Flash, The

Tens of Thousands

Label: free103.9 Country: USA

The Dust Dive Flash is The Dust Dive's Laura Ortman solo, working in a dreamy and detached world similar to The Dust Dive, who's "unconventional sound borrows from ill-American landscapes, edge-city teenage hangouts, and overgrown, overlooked places. Conceived in a noisy railroad apartment in Brooklyn, New York, the trio's songs possess the quirky sincerity of a youth recital while burrowing into mesmerizing, urban pastoral, and ghostly terrain. Employing violin, chord organ, piano, electric guitar, sampled field recordings, ham radio transmissions, musical saw, and two- and three-part vocals that are often counter-melodic and uniquely filtered, their sparse yet lush and textural sound-visions have been compared to Syd Barrett, The Flaming Lips, Smog, Palace, Dirty Three, and The Velvet Underground. Always taking a multidisciplinary approach, their live performances feature film and video projections that serve as a serene yet provocative visual accompaniment to the music.

"Laura Ortman, White Mountain Apache, grew up in a musical family. Her first instrument was the violin which she has played since 3rd grade. As a teenager she performed in both the St. Louis Youth Symphony and Alton Symphony. Studying visual art in college, she branched out into both performance and installation art where she began composing her own music for violin.

Upon moving to New York she played with the Brooklyn College and Hunter College Symphony Orchestras and performed original music accompaniment for choreographers and modern dancers at venues such as P.S. 122, the Joyce SoHo, Context Studios, and the Yard at Martha's Vineyard.

In 2000, she founded a band in Brooklyn with Ken Switzer and Bryan Zimmerman called The Dust Dive, a dark and melancholy introspection of places and times that inspired the three band members. The Dust Dive's unique concerts are often as much performance and installation arts as indie-folk gig, and include super-8 and video footage of weather documentaries, family movies and other similar images."-Free103Point9