Contemporary Movement

About

Duster recorded part of its 1998 debut, <i>Stratosphere</i>, with Phil Ek, a Pacific Northwest producer who by then had built up some significant credit, having worked with the likes of Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, and Earth. But <i>Stratosphere</i> turned out to be commercially earthbound, so the decision was made to stick around Duster’s hometown of San Jose for the band’s second record, 2000’s wryly dubbed <i>Contemporary Movement</i>. Their headphones were bad, their amps were idiosyncratic, and their tape supply wasn’t dependable. Yet the dozen songs that emerged from those piecemeal sessions were both richer and tighter than anything found on <i>Stratosphere</i>. The members of Duster, it seemed, had found their sound—and found a way to get it at home. Duster bowdlerized much of its slow-motion abstraction for <i>Contemporary Movement</i>, coiling it into songs that had more grit and more pronounced hook. In four minute, the opening track, “Get the Dutch,” moves from Fender Rhodes twinkle to fist-clenched exasperation. “Diamond,” meanwhile, ebbs and flows like a concise piece of post-rock, with Canaan Dove Amber singing exquisitely of ennui and ambition over barely there drums—as though stuck in an endless loop where very little actually happen. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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