DUMMY "Mandatory Enjoyment" BLUE LP (2021)

Details: DUMMY's 2021 album, Mandatory Enjoyment, released on Trouble In Mind Records on Sky Blue vinyl. Includes members and guests from adjoining acts Wildhoney, Peach Kelli-Pop, and Froth.

Description: "Los Angeles band Dummy refuses to slow down. After releasing two cassette EP’s in 2020 (on Popwig and Born Yesterday respectively), Dummy’s debut full-length album Mandatory Enjoyment arrives via Chicago’s Trouble in Mind Records. Employing pummeling guitars and celestial ambience within the same breath, the band folds a myriad of reference points into their drone-pop style. Influence from '60s melodicism and '90s UK noise-pop can be found woven in with inspiration from spiritual jazz, Japanese new age, and Italian minimalism.

Dummy dodges the brooding, dark, dramatic tropes of contemporary "artistic" music often found in punk, experimental, and electronic, instead insisting on joyous and euphoric sonic palettes. They refuse to be artistically stagnant, continuously shifting their approach to writing across 12 tracks. Shaped by performances around Los Angeles in 2019, songs like "Daffodils" and "Fissured Ceramics" feature relentless driving energy and ample psychedelic noise. Elsewhere, Dummy counterbalances the aggression with meditative synthscapes focused on sound design and studio experimentation, like on the motorik "X-Static Blanket". Finally, centerpiece "H.V.A.C." and the album's final track, "Atonal Poem", seek to synthesize these two poles, offering multi-part journeys through uncharted sonic territory.

In contrast to blissed-out instrumentation, Dummy's sardonic lyricism examines "the burden of modern life, consumerism, environmental collapse, alienation, and other anxieties born out of living in this absurd moment in history". Interior design, marine pollution, the psychology of commercial architecture, and nuclear testing are all featured subjects. Dummy's restless creativity keeps them moving ever-forward, continuously challenging themselves and pushing their sound into exciting and exhilarating places. This is - as the album title suggests - "Mandatory Enjoyment".

RIYL: Silver Apples, Laraaji, Velvet Underground, Stereolab, Cluster, Antena, My Bloody Valentine, Haruomi Hosono, Carl Sagan, Yo La Tengo, Finis Africae, Midori Takada"--Trouble In Mind Records

Grade: M (new stock)

TRACK LISTING SIDE A:

A1. Protostar
A2. Fissured Ceramics
A3. Final Weapon
A4. Punk Product #4
A5. Cloud Pleaser
A6. H.V.A.C.

TRACK LISTING SIDE B:

B1. Tapestry Distortion
B2. Unremarkable Wilderness
B3. Daffodils
B4. X-Static Blanket
B5. Aluminum In Retrograde
B6. Atonal Poem