Lamella: Love Versus Dirt
Contract Killers

With Love Versus Dirt, Austin-based Loren Dent follows paths previously trod by William Basinski and Stars of the Lid, with the oddly-titleddisc somewhat recalling Brian McBride's elegiac When the Detail Lost its Freedom. Dent's album is an even more restrained and meditative work by comparison, however, due in no small part to his affinity for extended duration. The disc's fourteen-minute opener “Screen Memories,” for instance, develops ever-so-slowly, with textures of scurrying ripples crackling alongside the faintest of church organ tones while the somnambulant “The History of These Things” drifts so softly it verges on inaudible. The album's eight pieces are as much glacially-evolving drones (“Deserts Bleed Earth”) as full-fledged ambient settings. Listening to Love Versus Dirt and tracks like “Under You Again” in particular, one thinks of Eluvium, even if Lamella's music possesses less of the latter's grandeur. Instead, Dent emphasizes the hymnal dimension of his music in pieces like “A Silent Extinction Beyond the Zero,” distinguishing his sound from that of his similarly meditative kin.

May 2006