WYNDEL HUNT - OBLIVION CD

"Wyndel Hunt has produced four recordings with the Los Angeles-based Dragon’s Eye: Fascillations (2005), Nk Ak (2007), Unit of Selection (2008), and Sunshine Noir (2010)."

His work also appeared on the first, third, and fourth Dragon’s Eye anniversary compilations. During this time he exhibited and performed in galleries, public spaces, and live venues, alone and in collaboration with visual artists.

Oblivion was built in the fall of 2011 with bass guitar, harmonica, and field recordings from the Pacific Northwest. Unlike some of Hunt’s previous work, Oblivion foregrounds unprocessed sound and pays less attention to the creation of composition through multi-track mixing techniques.

This is Hunt’s first release with Simulacra.

REVIEWS

When the music is stripped bare, collapsed to a single line or maybe two, it is captivating. It encourages a state of emptiness in the listener, leaving them space to fill in their own details, or to leave it bare. The album is best when it is evocative of nothing but a few notes drifting through a black oblivion. - silent ballet

Its always nice to see your quote used in a review – a reminder that I already reviewed this person before and apparently I was delighted. “a highly pleasant work” I wrote in Vital Weekly 715 about Wyndel Hunt’s ‘Sunshine Noir’. Its been quiet after that I think, but here is a new release with four new pieces, all, quite curiously, around ten minutes. He has expanded his set up from guitar and computer to bass guitar , harmonica and field recordings from the Pacific North-west. No computer is mentioned as such, so perhaps its not there, or it plays less of a role here. I think the latter. Unlike his previous which was all drone based and quite heavy as that (“‘louder’, more ‘present’ than many of his peers” I wrote), things seems to have smoothened out here a bit. No longer the shoegaze laptop guy, the dense layers of sounds, but with a bigger role for the sounds as they are. Maybe, so I was thinking, is some of this stuff even recorded in some sort of live situation – perhaps ‘live in studio’. It certainly sounds so. In the title piece we hear obscure field recordings and bass guitar treatments with perhaps a few keys down on the harmonica. In ‘Elision Field’ it all seems to revolve around hiss like sounds, and has a static form of composition. In ‘Pragmatism’ there seems to be a return to the drone days, but less shoegazing, although mildly distorted. The final piece, ‘Everything That Rises Does Not Converge’, is in return a more quiet piece and has a more collage like form, including a long section of near silence. That makes the whole thing quite a varied affair, with four quite different pieces of music, made with relatively simple means. Quite an effort in doing so and a proof of fine craftsmanship as such. (FDW - VITAL WEEKLY)

PREVIOUS REVIEWS

“A tale of two sounds here on Wyndel Hunt’s latest album for Dragons’ Eye. He has the ability to use melodic components and robust layers of sound and noise, and here those two signature elements combine to make a totally compelling CD.” Smallfish on Sunshine Noir (2010)

“Throughout Sunshine Noir, Hunt ripples your organ of Corti with fascinating granules of microcosmic sound.” Dave Segal, The Stranger (2010)