DIALECT - Under~Between

The influence of American composer Harold Montgomory Budd is deeply embedded within the zen-style ambient bouquet with which Andrew PM Hunt, aka Dialect (already known for Raft Of Trash, Outfit, Land Trance and Ex-Easter Island Head) marks his welcome return to the scene: “Under~Between” is the title of his new record, following that gem of fanciful visceral introspection titled “Loose Blooms” (2018).

Since the 2015 release of “Gowanus Drifts”, which bore that extraordinary emotional gut-punch identified as “Ghost Of Red Hook”, quietly notable among genre devotees, it's been a real pleasure keeping an eye on the movements of this talented and singular Liverpool multi-instrumentalist.

With his fourth album, Dialect turns toward a restrained ambient electronic sound, built on electroacoustic classicisms as reworked as they are enchanting, marked by a kind of refined emotional intelligence and an honest gift for melody and harmony, gently left to drift over evocative, fleeting atmospheres assembled around an exploration of subjects such as Buddhism (a topic dear to the artist) and related ideas of interdependence and relativity.

The embryo of "Under~Between" originated from a series of orchestral pieces commissioned a few years ago for the English collective Immix Ensemble, but which had remained shelved until now.

The release is the culmination of a long friendship with figures from the Rvng Intl. label, sparked by some in-depth reading on the Buddhist doctrine of Pratītyasamutpāda.

In the workings of the eleven tracks that make up the record, it's not hard to sense the essence of Harold Budd's pastoral touch, as well as the technical minimalism of the New York scene fathered by Steve Reich and Philip Glass, as well as an unmistakable Liverpudlian essence.

The tracks unfold at a rather conversational pace, bubbling with a friendly, fizzy energy built on poetically cut finishing touches and lucid, Eastern-inspired tonalities ("An Archipelago"), and on admirable powers of synthesis via frequency modulation, which keep in check the pseudo-pop quirks laid out across the two parts of "Yamaha Birds" and in "Stacks", with clear echoes of Portland's Visible Cloaks.

Budd's meticulous attention to detail shapes both the core of "Sentimental, Sedimentary" and the evocative, layered blends of "Feathers Dance" and "Avert Yr Path", the latter two particularly recalling the timeless enchantment of Ernest Hood's "Neighborhoods – Memories Of Times Past" (1975), an ambient milestone that united zither and synthesizer melodies with sounds drawn from field recordings of soundscapes captured in the suburbs of Oregon. Indulgent piano permeates the enchanted essentiality of "Holon", while the variations of "Ringing The Web" drift into twilit stretches of minimal jazz.

"Under~Between" unfolds with the hopeful energy of shoots sprouting from soft earth. Andrew PM Hunt's project, born from the cross-pollination of acoustic and synthetic ensembles with the human voice, grows into a joyful ecosystem of delicate sounds and unexpected phrasing, offering an eccentric yet delightful fruit of ambient electronica for refined palates.

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23/03/2021