Van Wey is able to take themes and stretch them until they are a fine thread, weaving so slowly and smoothly that actual minutes pass the listener by almost unnoticed.
SF-Bay-Area-to-Shaoxing-China transplant Brock Van Wey recently released his thirty-third solo album, this time on n5MD under his moniker bvdub, and he is on exquisite form. It’s unfair to call Mr. Van Wey anything other than what he is: a sophisticated composer who excels at building masterpieces of subtle movement and emotion that unfurl over an extended period, and delicately maneuver through a plane with such tremendous subtlety and grace that each of the four twenty-minute tracks deserves its own in-depth review. Each piece of music evolves by introducing simple elements and allowing them to morph as the song progresses, evolving constantly at a crawl, giving the piece a sense of continual steady movement.
Van Wey’s talent and creative voice are particularly evident in his inventive use of vocal tracks, which enter the listener’s awareness as vocals but decay over time into the mass of beautiful, harmonious noise that is the track as a whole. Their three forms are words, sounds, and feelings, and they flow intricately between each of these phases, sometimes existing at a triple-point, other times embodying a single characteristic. Every time, it is beautiful.
Because he has no issue building twenty-minute tracks, Van Wey is able to take themes and stretch them until they are a fine thread, weaving so slowly and smoothly that actual minutes pass the listener by almost unnoticed. At six minutes in, the opening track, “Everything Between You and Me” still feels like it’s in its infancy, though it keeps climbing in intensity and volume. Moments of chaos and clarity flow like ebbing tides and carry the listener with them, cradling them in a blanket of aural strata which are simultaneously heavy and light. It’s an almost magical listening experience.
Suddenly, more than an hour has passed, and the final track, “A History of Distance,” crescendos and falls to its close, and I’m transported back to reality, where I feel much like I do at the end of a fantastic book: rocked by the fiction, and left unstable by the experience. That bvdub can accomplish this with such regularity, and so prolifically, is a testament to his genius. Because that’s what he is. A genius.
A History of Distance is available on n5MD.
