Kiln

Dusker

Ghostly International

Its been a long time since I heard an album of such quality craftsmanship that was still so strangely disappointing. Dusker, Kiln’s long-awaited follow up to 2004’s Sunbox (also on Ghostly International), offers beautifully flowing, downbeat moods that sound great, but somehow fail to leave a lasting impression. It’s much like a Hollywood film full of special effects and beautiful stars that has all but slipped from your mind by the time you reach the lobby. It’s hard to pinpoint why. One reason could be its almost plateaux-like pace, never really speeding up or slowing down from a momentum that can only be described as comfortable. Similarly, the emotional range is quite narrow, never straying far from a sad-tinged or good-to-be-alive sunset feel, hence perhaps the title. But even if the aim is limiting, it’s always possible to evoke everything from it if you can grab hold of it and display it from different directions. Sonically, Dusker doesn’t do that either and seems to get caught too long looking at its rounded depths in a flat mirror.

The fabric of the music is undeniably lush and built with great care, weaving and spilling in narrow planes like a brook or like the movement of birds, but always with a dedicated and polite calmness. The titles of the tracks carry an outdoors feel to them, from the opener “Fyrepond” to “Flycather” and “Sunset Highway,” but somehow it’s hard to empathize with them along the road. For example, the piano of “Airplane Shadow” and its companion track “Korsair” is just too heart-tugging and clean to really let yourself surrender to it. “Rustdusk” is by far the best track and something like being breathlessly seduced in a suburban dubscape. Parts of Dusker recall a less abstract and angular To Rococo Rot, while others should be more like a glitchy, Hex-era Bark Psychosis, especially given the use of many traditional rock instruments. It seems almost cruel to criticize the work of Kevin Hayes, Kirk Marrison, and Clark Rehberg III, as the trio certainly knows its trade judging by the surface of the music. But in the end, it only feels like a beautiful face hiding the empty void beneath.

Chris Mann