Dustin Wong – Diagonally Talking Echo from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.
A tuner, an octave pedal, some distortion pedals, a delay pedal, an envelope filter, and a delay pedal just about describes the chain of effects that Ponytail guitarist Dustin Wong plugged into on Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads, his forthcoming LP on Thrill Jockey. I haven’t heard the whole thing, but “Diagonally Talking Echo” gives a pretty good approximation of the live set he’s been refining since dropping his first solo LP, Infinite Love, came out in 2010: at once melodic and repetition-based, strobing and strangely delicate. Layer by layer, Wong builds a ticking machinery of minutely interwoven sounds and pentatonic guitar squiggles. When he opens his mouth real-wide and lets out a sing-scream wail (see the video he made, above), it’s as though all the pent-up tension were finally being released. Below, Wong describes his writing process through the double metaphor of industrial textile production and French pastry-making:
“I see all these pedals as a kind of textile factory. The sheets and colors are determined then the patterns are laid on top, one layer after another until it becomes a fabric mille feuille. Once that cake looks done it gets replicated again through another delay pedal. I can keep building these sounds on top each other and decide whether I want to take half of the cakes slices or not, if i do, I can gaze at the symmetrical void of what I have taken.”
Words: Emilie Friedlander
Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads is out February 21st on Thrill Jockey in CD and LP formats.
Mountains, Live at Le Poisson Rouge, Unsound Festival, February 10, 2010.
