Dummy's 'do you love the color of the sky?' Is a Nocturnal Masterpiece of Self-Sampling
After Free Energy, Dummy went out and played roughly 113 shows across about 150 days. Alex Ewell’s read on it: “Touring has had a huge impact on us and our music.” The impact turns out to be a method. On their first record for Polyvinyl, the band recorded themselves playing and then cut the results up into a sample library — guitars as source material rather than foreground. Joe Trainor: “I liked the idea of taking glacial guitar drones and cutting ’em up into a new context of the jungle inspired drums.”
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: baggy and bass-forward where it counts. Treble’s Jeff Terich singles out “Full Spectrum Dominance” for “its wah-wah guitar whooshes and baggy bassline offering a proper hit of ecstasy” — a track Trainor says began as an attempt at something “just heavier,” which the band joked was their nu-metal song until a tambourine overdub sent it dancewards. The Spatial Dynamics: produced, recorded and mixed by Dummy with Joo-Joo Ashworth between a home studio and Studio 22, mastered by Mikey Young. Northern Transmissions calls the result “nocturnal, glossy, and a little disorienting,” noting that “here those guitars step back, and the band turns their own live-band instincts into raw material.” The Line of Best Fit names the palette as “drum machines, swirling synths, ethereal vocals” plus “the lava lamp guitars.”
Standout Performance
Ewell, credited with percussion, sound design and production. On a record whose central gesture is turning a band into a sampler, the person holding both ends of that job is the one to watch.
Why It’s Certified
Terich: “they’ve made an album that just sounds spectacular,” built by “building up their own self-recorded sample library that they scatter into constellations of gauzy dancefloor euphoria,” escalating on “Omen Globe” into “a dizzy, strobing rush of ecstatic ravegaze.” Paste hears breakbeats filling the blank space and a record that “feels like a lost Stereolab track at times.” Clash, awarding seven, lands the point: “It’s sonically disorienting but also incredibly cohesive… It’s a bold choice, one that works in Dummy’s favour.” Trainor’s own gloss is the best liner note going: “so much of the record is like the remixed versions of pop songs you’ll never hear.”