Duster

A “capsule [spatial, ed.] losing contact,” adrift: this is the place of the soul to which the listener of “Stratosphere” is transported. A solitary, muffled world, accompanied only by the monotonous background hum of the instrumentation, gradually shaped by the last emotions of its passenger. Carried down into the depths of regret on “The Queen Of Hearts,” or triumphantly ascending in the instrumental suite of “Gold Dust,” or simply anesthetized by the uniqueness of its situation (“Moon Age”).

The record came out in the late '90s, when the music industry was still booming, but at a time when it was even harder, if not impossible, for what we call “cult bands” to break into the highly selective circuit of music magazines, radio stations and record store shelves. The fact that their second album, “Contemporary Movement,” was reviewed by a young Pitchfork still didn't count for much, and so the band split up after a couple of LPs and an EP.

The following story echoes that of several other bands left buried in obscurity (American Football, to name one). The cult following grew gradually among listeners, in this case often under the radar, surfacing only, for instance, in the rising value of the record's first pressing on Discogs, the well-known marketplace for used records, moving in step with the '90s revival of recent years. It's no secret, then, that reissues and relaunches of these bands are based on the information available about demand for them, and so last year the band's entire catalogue was reissued in the compilation "Capsule Losing Contact." Not only that: the band has also returned to activity, just as has happened in other cases.

Duster and “Stratosphere,” despite an obvious kinship in style and sound, set themselves apart from the slowcore movement through the vaguely detached, stoic character of their music, without ever reaching the ceremonial quality of Low. Their approach to songs like “Docking The Pod” is almost matter-of-fact and somewhat wry, perfectly replicating the feel of a sequential operation. Despite the assonance with a band as bluntly explicit as Bedhead (“Earth Moon Transit”), the cathartic result achieved here is perhaps the highest ever reached by a slowcore band.

Unlike the strictly personal experience the genre often falls back on, “Stratosphere” instead evokes, more vividly, that of humanity as a whole, and the capsule could very well be our own planet, in its triumphant and absurd, ceaseless revolution (the title track). All this is free of the worse existential or didactic tendencies of a Malick and his “Tree of Life,” yet it paints a portrait that is, perhaps more truthfully, ironic and resigned to its own inherent exceptionality.

In the end, Duster is one of the acts that best internalized the lesson of one of slowcore's founding inspirations, Galaxie 500 (“The Twins/Romantica”), and one that fully grasped the genre's natural progression into post-rock (“Echo, Bravo”).

Here emerges the deeper meaning of Duster's music (and not only theirs) as a means and object inseparable from human existence, paralleling the very history of the band and this record. If something has value for humanity, it will emerge over time, and increasingly fast, as the connections running through it become ever more pervasive and frequent.

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23/08/2020