ASHER DUST
As with pretty much everything Asher Dust
does these days, this is probably deserving
of Demo Of The Month status, but the man
is up against stiff competition this time
round and anyway, since this latest offering
is the fruits of his time in the studio with
Umair Chaudhry that he won by coming top
last time, it’s probably best we give others
a chance, eh? It feels like a bit of a hurried
affair truth be told, and AJ himself admits,
“not everything works, as you will hear.”
The dedication to “pop hooks with fucked
up musical ideas” persists though and the
best tracks here are, as ever, a joy. `Tender
Pieces’, for example, an almost maniacal
melange of Latino disco, swimming
psychedelia, sci-fi electro craziness, a
200MPH electro skitter and wacked-out
soul crooning, everything chucked in
the pot, the resulting mad fun a suitably
messy affair. Elsewhere `Zodiac Signoff’
sounds like a deliberately malfunctioning
android skank and `Shall I Name Names’
mines industrial drum&bass. The thumping
ragamuffin scurry of `Flaming Hell’ doesn’t
so much find the demo running out of
steam as settling into a more steady pace.
Asher Dust’s trademark style of shovelling
everything and a bit more into the mix and
hoping the resulting three and a bit minutes
doesn’t burst under the strain will always
produce uneven, often idiosyncratic music,
but when you consider the sensible, staid
alternatives below, ain’t that really the best
way?
