ALWAYS EVERYTHING

DUSTIN WONG // INFINITE LOVE

Dustin Wong // Live at The Hideout

Solo Guitar Record. Makes you shudder, doesn’t it? As I’m sure many others do, while reading descriptions of music I’ve got a mental shit-list that automatically kicks in when I see particular phrases: Future Garage. Five string bass. Twee. I know its gonna be a bumpy ride when one of these pops up. Solo Guitar Record is as a good a candidate as any for the list, instantly inspiring visions of sweaty troubadours, desperately practicing godawful, neo-classical fretboard thunder and arguing about guitar tone underneath Dragonforce youtubes. Dustin Wong’s second record outside of the “confines” of hyperactive, sugar-rush savants Ponytail positively demolishes all of these preconceptions however.

Dustin Wong - Infinite Love preview from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Coming across more a hyper-coloured Electric Counterpoint than tireless (read: boring) fret ascension, Infinite Love is two takes on one majestic, machine-like composition, each presented on a separate CD/LP. Obvious reference points for loop-filled, frenetic mathematics will probably spring to mind within seconds of hitting play, but the record is far from a Don Caballero doppelganger. More closely aligned with the wave of Emeralds related material over the last year, Infinite Love’s gradual web weaving takes on an ethereal, psychedelic quality. Beautifully juxtaposing the labryinthine clockwork precision of the interlocking parts with the largely percussion-less whole, the record has the bizarre quality of feeling intensely propulsive and completely motionless all at once. 

—-

Simon