Gone Beyond: Facet #1
Transfer Station

Facet #1 is the premiere release from Santa Fe, New Mexico-based producer Dahvin Bugas aka Gone Beyond on his own Transfer Station label. In this first of four seven-inch releases in the series, Bugas teams up with Bill Russell, an obscure talent who, though originally from Kansas City, retired in Santa Fe after a long career as a railroad engineer. On the ten-minute single's two tracks, Russell reads excerpts from different sources, among them original poetry and words by Sun Ra (with whom he was close) backed by Bugas's dusty, loop-heavy constructions.

In the opening cut “After the Storm,” Russell muses upon temporal matters (“Never tomorrow comes...”) against a woozy backdrop of beats, marimbas, and strings, all of it smeared with healthy doses of vinyl crackle. With acoustic bass, flute, and bells evoking the sound and spirit of the ‘60s jazz era, the B-side's “Movement Out” kicks into gear with a robust drum groove while Russell waxes philosophical once more, this time about the infinite, dimensional planes, and other spiritual phenomena.

Things move fast in Gone Beyond's action-packed world, and consequently the tracks are over before you know it. And so, while Facet #1 definitely provides no small amount of aural pleasure, for maximum effect the best approach might be to experience all eight of the series' tracks as a totality.

December 2014