Beginning points of comparison are Boards of Canada’s Music Has A Right To Children and Gridlock’s Trace, and Dyn occupies a place somewhere between the two, applying Gridlock’s penchant for infecting rhythms and melodies with noise to Boards of Canada’s early pastoral style of ambient landscapes. “Notch” unfolds like a fresh rainbow on a moist spring day, tones cascading across the sky in a gorgeous arc, while raindrops leave tiny indentations in the course of multi-colored light. “Gravity” pops with a cascade of falling objects, their seeming arrhythmic pattern building into a complex polyrhythm. While a slow drone drapes itself across the backdrop, tiny elements of noise and squelchy melodies compete for your attention in the foreground. Approaching “Gravity” as an exercise in the layering of distinct musical objects, the Funcken brothers craft a dizzying array of sounds that
becomes quite a bit more than the sum of their individual parts.
“Polar” is caught up with systemic glitches, hiccups and dropouts which cut up the mournful expression of snow drifting across an arctic landscape. Imagine the sun shining across a glittering expanse of white glacier and how the bright light makes the scene precise and pure. Yet, the heat of the sun causes the temperature to rise and the ice shifts. You can hear it moving, cracking and breaking beneath you, as the serene surface of the ice is disturbed. “Smog” tracks along in the wake of the sun as well, though here the sun rises across Los Angeles and, as it moves across the smog-tinged sky, the city wakes and traffic begins to flow in stylized and systematic patterns, voices begin to percolate through the atmosphere, and the city moves from its nocturnal quiescent state into an active and vibrant landscape.
This is the appeal of Dyn, ultimately: how Don & Roel manage to built complex arrangements from delicate parts. There are no hard edges on Dyn, just an endless array of soft particles covered with an intricate coating of glittering filigree. Gorgeous.
Dyn is out now on U-cover.
