Dean Spunt + Guests + M-G Dysfunction

DEAN SPUNT’s new album for Drag City is titled ‘Basic Editions’ (out Sept 27th). It’s an excursion in electronic sound that unpacks his fascination with language – in this case, the syntax of systems and processes. By turns meditative, compulsive and consumptive, Basic Editions distills a 64 voice module through a headfull of ideas – somewhat like pouring a cornucopia of possible ambient moods and EZ listening impulses backwards through a funnel, inspiring a deceptively absurd rainbow of soul to spray out the other end.??With this new release, Dean identifies his process as “using sounds, rather than making sounds”. This approach to music-making is a train of thought that’s been rolling out from the far horizon of the past for ages now – but for Dean, whose previous works within and without No Age depended on their making of sounds, it’s a fresh work stance. Given, however, No Age’s traditional further manipulation of their own sounds (via loops and treatments), Basic Editions delivers further unexpected hard-rights and lefts in the non-aesthetic aesthetic that has defined Dean’s path over the past two decades. Steering toward wacked digital soundscapes that bounce colourfully across the stereo azimuth, Dean creates a kind of post-ambient neo-exotica that hinges upon a giddy conflation of cosmic and comic.

https://deanspunt.bandcamp.com/music

GUESTS are Jessica Higgins and Matthew Walkerdine of Glasgow, UK, both formerly of the bands Vital Idles and Mordwaffe. They have been closely tied with DIY music, art and publishing for over a decade. Using (amateur) electronics, singing, speaking and field recording they make songs which blend the rhythms of popular music and contemporary approaches to collage, sampling, improvisation and repetition. As inspired by film and art as they are the legacies of twee underground and avant garde experimentalism, their loose, domestically twinged compositions explore feelings, atmospheres and moments which are hard to articulate and the quite literal notion of being a “guest”. “I wish I was special” is their debut record on World Of Echo and has drawn some comparison with the private musings of Flaming Tunes, Idea Fire Company’s domestic electronics, or perhaps even Annea Lockwood’s framing of emotional connection within avant garde structures. 

https://by-guests.bandcamp.com/album/i-wish-i-was-special

M-G DYSFUNCTION is the music and art project of Fred M-G. M-G Dysfunction has previously shared the stage with acts such as The Bug, Marie Davidson, Caroline, Gnod, Divide & Dissolve and Meatraffle. M-G Dysfunction live shows combine musical influences from the likes of Dean Blunt and Death Grips with elements of stand-up comedy and clowning. Most recent single ‘Junglists Only’ came out in August 2024. The third M-G Dysfunction full-length ‘Mista Self-Isolation’ will be released before the end of the year.

https://mgdysfunction.bandcamp.com/