The Fat Angel Sings

Stereolab comparisons may be mandatory but the debut album from this drony Los Angeles. band featuring former members of Wildhoney moves beyond the bachelor pad,  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 pummelling 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.

Baltimore band Wildhoney have been dormant for a while now — they are missed — but guitarists Joe Trainor and Nathan O’Dell are still playing together in Los Angeles band Dummy alongside Alex Ewell (who played on Wildhoney’s Naive Castle EP) and Emma Maatman (Kent State). Like Wildhoney, Dummy have shoegazey elements to their sound, but they more directly pull from drony psych and komisch, be it Cluster, Neu! or The United States of America.

Single chords are jammed upon for extended periods while vintage combo organs and synths hum and gurgle. Dense, ethereal harmonies mingle with fuzzed out guitars and jazzy/motorik drumming. Melodies are sweet but cut with white noise. If all this makes Dummy sound like a certain group known for Space Age Bachelor Pad Music, well they would probably be the first to admit the influence, from the sonics (see “Daffodils,” “Fissured Ceramics”) to the song titles that seem to have come from a Duophonic Refrigerator Magnet Poetry set. (Does that exist? It should.) But they are very good at it and, following last year’s two EPs, Mandatory Enjoyment finds the band staking out their own corner of the universe, with tracks like the beautiful “Atonal Poem” and the tripped-out “X-Static Blanket” pointing to intoxicating new directions in which to head.

Tune in now, but stay tuned, too

released October 22, 2021

Dummy: Alex, Emma, Joe & Nathan.

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 arrives via Chicago’s Trouble in Mind Records. Employing pummelling 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”. 

Releases October 22nd, 2021

Dummy: Alex, Emma, Joe & Nathan.

Does it still count as keeping it simple if the one thing you’re trying to achieve is actually pretty complicated? Dummy’s music suggests that, actually, it does not. The Los Angeles band’s mission statement could fit on a bumper sticker – fuse avant-garde musical elements with the building blocks of guitar-based pop music – but its Tilt-A-Whirl execution on their debut album bleeds beyond those borders into something maximalist and wonkily thrilling.

Melding the driving momentum of krautrock with the textural mayhem of Can, the grubby eccentricity of the Velvets and the gilt-edged melodies of the Byrds, “Mandatory Enjoyment” follows up a brace of cassette releases by doing something different all the time. We caught up with band members Nate and Joe – who split guitar duties (Jazzmaster and Jaguar respectively) with vocals and keys – to pull at a few threads.

More goodies this year from the ranks of Trouble in Mind Records. The label announced this morning that they’ve up Los Angeles. pop combo Dummy. The band’s had a couple of well-received tapes out in the last couple of years and they make the jump to a debut LP blowing through the vernal psych-pop gardens that nurtured Broadcast, Vanishing Twin, and Stereolab while stumbling the noise pop alley for a tussle with Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters (the band, not the album) and Snapper.

The first cut from the album skews a bit more towards the psych-pop impulses, letting an effervescent beat push the song along while overdriven keys and silken vocals do the heavy lifting. The band is channelling their influences in a way that feels refreshing — a glorious head-on collision of pop and pummel that explodes with caffeinated colour. Mandatory Enjoyment is out October 22nd.

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”. 

Releases October 22nd, 2021

Dummy: Alex, Emma, Joe & Nathan.

Taken from the band’s debut full-length album “Mandatory Enjoyment”, out October 22nd, 2021 via Trouble In Mind Records