11 Instances of dead Letters+Words

11 Instances of Dead Letters + Words is the kind of album you hate to describe. It touches too many bases, evokes too many comparisons that can only be incomplete and partial. The music draws on the abstract experiments of lowercase and minimal ambient and the sweet melancholia of post-rock and cottage drone music to create its own space. The artwork puts “dread” at the heart of the album, but there is nothing dreadful or menacing about it. Except for the track “Dread” itself, which features disquieting underwater creaking and ghost frequencies, the music is rather peaceful. Field recordings from rural and urban environments are manipulated or re-created (difficult to actually tell) to assemble a quixotic landscape. Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words’ art resides in letting this chimeric landscape speak for itself. Sometimes it is stimulated by an instrument (there are a few piano motifs buried within the bowels of this CD), at other times it sounds like an organized activity is taking place (“Last Words Anywhere”). The results are not constantly convincing and, despite a certain easiness of listen, 11 Instances of Dead Letters + Words demands your full attention for it not to fade away into the background of your mind. But it rewards active listening, transporting the listener in its own special place, a place you’ll want to visit again. Highlights include the airborne “The Hills Are Alive,” the very sweet “Wires of Oh Dots,” the aforementioned “Dread” (the disc’s peak despite its singularity; a highly compelling sound construction), and the closing “Dead Letters Spell Out ‘Alive!’,” a piece that would have been perfect for one of Drone Records’ 7″ EP artifacts. Recommended. – François Couture