Stratosphere

About

Toward the end of the 2010, something strange happened to the sleepy and seemingly forgotten California trio Duster: The group exploded. Duster had formed in the 1990s and made two albums for the indie label Up before vanishing at the start of the millennium. But the group’s modest output took off as the streaming era began, and their long out-of-print records began fetching hundreds of dollars each on the used market. A Numero Group box set and reunion shows soon followed, and the arrival of TikTok led to even more excitement around the long-obscure sleepy psychedelic slowcore band. In the late 1990, Duster’s music sounded like a secret—a gentle racket confined to the band’s home studio in San Jose. But two decades later, thanks in large part to their expansive 1998 debut, <i>Stratosphere</i>, the band’s misanthropic murmurs were now in full public view. At 17 tracks that span more than 53 minute, <i>Stratosphere</i> is something of a playground, each corner offering up a slightly different idea—something new that might be tried. Its vocals etched between walls of distortion and buttresses of drum, “Echo, Bravo” reaches toward the heights of what would become post-metal, while the title track is a space-rock slow-burn, with waves of feedback spiraling around one another, and drums that feel like an expanding galaxy. “Inside Out,” their viral hit, is a beautiful bummer, voices softly asking for a little help or mercy over a slight three-piece march; “Reed to Hillsborough” amplifies and sharpens that same approach, buoyed by the production of Phil Ek at Seattle’s Avast! Recording. There are instrumental miniatures and tape-fuzzed jams that foreshadow coming waves of bedroom tinkerer, plus bits of exotica and spans of exquisite brooding. <i>Stratosphere</i> is less a single Rorschach blot than an entire deck of them. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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