Cyclic Defrost review the new Gareth Dickson album Collected Recordings.
Glaswegian Dickson opens the compilation with ‘Fifth (The Impossibility of Death)’, a form of sonic sculpture with layers of static, long extensions of tones, plays of surfaces extending and reshaping while a minimum of guitar play opens and heightens melodic possibilities. It highlights the use of reverb that in the more folk driven tracks is played not to as radical a conclusion but to create atmospheric effect for the delivery of Dickson’s poetic weavings. If the comparisons to Drake are to abound it is clear in the halting melancholic intonation on ‘Song Woman Wine’, where words are extended as halting tones into wistful ether. Such is the romantic construction of the folk realm that cleverly creates a mystery with a simple shape change. ‘Trip to Blanik’ returns to instrumental guitar and effects landscape, where cleverness and densely packed and layered experimentation abound.
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