This curious album is subtitled 'Vol 2 Instrumental and Spoken Word 1980 -2008' and serves as a companion piece to Vol.1 (Songs with Singing) from 2009.
Unlike the previous volume there is no 'band' sound or straight songs. Only two of the eighteen tracks, Ornette and Don Vliet Street, feature other musician and ,as the title of these tunes suggest, the influence of free jazz and Captain Beefheart experimentation is strong.
For the most part this is essentially the collected instrumental work of one guy having fun in his studio making eclectic music using whatever gadgets he can lay his hands on. The subtitle is somewhat misleading since the only spoken word accompaniment is on the tracks The Ghost Walk and The Laboratory.
No real attempt has been made to put the material into a chronological sequence although Dyer's track by track guide gives the low-down on the when, why and where of each recording. Nothing here is very hi-tech, which seems to indicate that Dyer prefers the raw hands-on simplicity of analogue to the cold precision of digital technology.
Over a third of the tunes were originally recorded on a 4-track system and only nominally cleaned up for this release. I Want To See The Future features vocoder and theremin and aside from these, and various other, gismos, Dyers plays mainly sax and guitar.
Dyers switches styles to suit his mood covering genres which include rockabilly (Grub), funk (Groovy), electro rock (Turn It Up) and catchy pop (Skank!). These, and other tunes, are augmented with jazzy interludes.
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More Colors Available, 'written' by his wife, features an "approximate drift" of unsynchronized sounds put together on a 4-track which was probably fun to make but not so easy on the ear. This tune epitomises a DIY style fired by what his press pack describes as a "heartfelt but heady intellectualism". This possibly explains the album's main title although this could also be a nod to Dyer's day job as President of Argosy University, Seattle.
The level of self indulgence and quirkiness is such that the sounds here are well outside the mainstream yet at the same time they are too lo-fi to satisfy contemporary fans of experimental music.
Tom Dyers is probably not too bothered by this. He is one of those singular artists who seems to blissfully disregard anything that could be classed as faddish or fashionable. He just goes his own way following his instinct in the vague hope that he'll gather a few curious listeners along the way. And it won't cost you anything to find out if you're in tune with his vision or not since this, and his previous volume, are available for free downloading or streaming from the label's website
Green Monkey Records
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