Everyday Dust :: Assemblance X Sessions (Dustopian Frequencies)

The sounds here are not just the contemporary musique concrète we’ve all come to know and love from Everyday Dust, but musique métaphysique. It’s earthy, its rooted, its physical powerful when blaring through the headphones or speakers and subwoofer, but it contains the ever necessary particles of dust that transport me to the otherworld every time I listen to music from this artist.

Cavernous sound sculptures

 

One of the most famous lines in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, comes from The Burial of the Dead section when he wrote, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” On Assemblance X Sessions, the ever mysterious Everyday Dust, gives us an earful of fear.

Originally transmitted from the depths of the Hollow Earth, these cavernous sound sculptures trace the movement of batwings out from the underworld at twilight to the insect feasting grounds in forests just as dark as the mammoth caves. Perhaps it is better to say these pieces were constructed to celebrate the birthday broadcast of Hollow Earth Art on January 17th, 2026. Hollow Earth Art is a Low Power FM station operating on 104.9 Mhz as KHUH in Seattle, and also streams online. Remember radio? I always like to point out that radio was the original “streaming music” option for music and talk, both on terrestrial broadcasts, and later down from satellite orbits. When the internet came around it was radio stations who pioneered streaming music online. The non-profit community stations like KHUH and many others around the world often have great schedules of music to tune into, with dedicated DJs who have been music fans for years and years and decades and decades. Tapping into the human side of streaming music through seeking out creative radio stations is one of the best ways to get turned on to new artists, hear innovative and eclectic mixes, and otherwise avoid Spotify and other services who are so shitty to musicians.

As with their fellow radio non-profits, KHUH, Hollow Earth Radio, “presents a forum for underrepresented music, sounds and perspectives. We support the local music community in Seattle, King County, Washington state, and the larger Pacific Northwest. Our focus is on found sound, field recordings, forgotten music, local musicians, bedroom recordings, low-fi demos, dreams, storytelling, and things that feel real. We expose works that have yet to be unearthed or have long been dormant. We acknowledge and celebrate raw talent and imperfections, and encourage bands who’ve never had their music air on a radio before to take a chance with us.”

Musique métaphysique ::

DJ Bleek hosts the Urban Mutant show on KHUH and commissioned this work from Everyday Dust. As such it is a delectable entry into the canon of electronic music made specifically for radio broadcast. These are the transmission arts that keep the airwaves interesting. When so much of the radio spectrum has been bought up by corporate interests, it is a truly great thing when the portions of it that remain to world citizens are used for artwork, or in the case of amateur or ham radio, to communicate with one another. Sound art is another case of communication. It communicates something completely different than main radio stream.

These streams course up from underground rivers found in those underworld depths. Melded from limestone, calcium and other mineral ore, these reverberant electroacoustic structures are kind of like chamber pieces, if you consider the chamber something you have to reach by moving a way a rock near the roots of an ancient tree and follow those roots through the moist loam until it gives way a labyrinth of branching tunnels and ancient rooms of rock.

The sounds here are not just the contemporary musique concrète we’ve all come to know and love from Everyday Dust, but musique métaphysique. It’s earthy, its rooted, its physical powerful when blaring through the headphones or speakers and subwoofer, but it contains the ever necessary particles of dust that transport me to the otherworld every time I listen to music from this artist. There is a touch of foreboding in these sessions, the fear I mentioned at the beginning of this review, but the propulsive journey helps the listener transcend such fear and gain new experiences.

This album may be listed as a curio in the Dustopian Frequencies catalog, but is an essential curiosity. Get one for your cabinet.

Assemblance X Sessions is available on Dustopian Frequencies. [Bandcamp]