Dreamcrusher


(Copyright © 2020 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of Use )
Panopticon (2020), 7.5/10
Another Country (2020), 8/10
Centennial Gardens: Archive Live 3.26.2023 Mucho Stereo (2023), 6/10
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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)

Dreamcrusher, the brainchild of Kansas black transgender queer artist Luwayne Glass, relocated to New York in 2015, debuted with a series of EPs: the tentative Anti-Pop/ Reykjavik (2009), Incinerator (2013), with Cathedral of Moths and the eight-minute stuttering, grating noise-carnival of Vulpeculae Freeze, Canal de Holograms (2013), with Antagonist and Just Like Malevich, I'm All Broke Up/ Lemlaestelse (2014), with the maximalist industrial clangor of I'm All Broke Up, Suicide Deluxe (2014), with Godless Chic, Ghost Orchid and the thundering voodoobilly of Dracula Meets The Lorelei, Haine (2014), with Memories (a fibrillating threnody a` la Suicide) and La Haine (a lullaby that is emblematic of his industrial pop), Antipop (2014), with the 12-minute radioactive ballet Nucleus, and Katatonia (2015), with the gothic abstraction of Imponderabilia and the 13-minute hissing and howling trance of Mirror. NQRM - Volume 1 (2016) is a 16-song compilation.

THe EP Hackers All of Them Hackers (2015) contains the ear-splitting power-drilling of Fear and the booming seismic antipop of Trap Door.

Two more EPs came out before his first album: Quid Pro Quo (2016), with the eight-minute wall of noise of Myrtle Ave - Broadway, and Grudge2 (2018).

Panopticon (2020) contains just one 39-minute long composition. It begins with some free-jazz abstraction and found voices, and then suddenly plunges into a violent and distorted punk-rock rant. After hinting at some infernal disco music and exploring the darkest corners of hell, with a female voice singing in the background, buried in loud distortions, the sound collage simply explodes, but in a stuttering manner, making it difficult to decipher whatever is going on underneath.

One month later, another mixtape came out, Another Country (2020), containing an even more intense and elaborate 43-minute composition full of idiosyncratic samples: extremely degraded ballads, conversations with demons in the language of wails and drones, instrumental interludes and songs that draw inspiration from a wide ranging spectrum, from the Residents to Buddhist ceremonial music, dissonant chamber music, massive melodic shoegazing distortions, and so on. There's an anthemic song hidden inside the noise of minute 19 before the "music" implodes in a tornado of distortions evoking a mental breakdown. There's a terrific punk-industrial dirge at minute 32 before it disintegrates in a freakish carillon. (The mixtape is officially subdivided in 12 "songs" and for each one Glass listed the samples used, most of them truly obscure, including the covers of Dog Breath's Long Kiss Goodnight and of Gothic Hut's C-14, here renamed Wanderer).

Note: Aviv Yaish identified the samples.

Polymath (first song on side A) lifts the guitar riff from the beginning of Tony! Toni! Tone'!'s Whatever You Want. The Crooklyn Dodger's Return Of corresponds to Blameless (starting at 9:40 on side A). The poignant piano part starting at around 14:01 on side A is taken from Timo Andres' How Can I Live in Your World of Ideas? The anthemic A Reaching Out (starting at 18:01) is based on The Fall's Barmy. Starting at 20:21 is Metallic Mauve which is based on the beginning of this short clip documenting a live show by the Doors. Side B starts with Can't Get the Stink Out which takes a very tiny sample from this song (the 3 notes played on the keyboard). No Trend's Who's To Say is the basis of Drowning World (starting at 2:57). Gunna's Big Shot was heavily edited and used in Takeover (starting at 5:31). Good Luck (starting 8:12) uses a sample from Mad-Izm. Only Landscape (10:57) does not employ credited samples.

Centennial Gardens was a collaboration with producer King Vision Ultra that resulted in the album Archive Live 3.26.2023 Mucho Stereo (2023). It's another display of Luwayne Glass as a formidable vocalist, especially when it duets with noise and chaos.

(Copyright © 2020 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )