Across Dust Devil, a notionally ambient electronic double album, Naemi—a Kansan now based in Berlin—crafts songs that rise and fall gently. Each one has a strong point of view but a brittle feel, like they began as sharp statements before the producer whittled them away to nothing. Indeed, like weather.gov says rather poetically about the tornado-like phenomenon that gives the album its name, each song arrives in a haze and when “depleted or the balance is broken,” “will break down and dissipate.” It’s a soft and magical album, big on ambition and small in scale, which is, in my opinion, the proper amount of each.
Naemi, who previously produced under the name Exael, is a member of a loose crew of musicians from Kansas and beyond—most notably Ulla and Huerco S., both of whom appear on the album—working in the more expansive side of electronic music. Expect to hear sweeping vistas of sound, ping-ponging synths, slow laser beams melting across muffled hi-hats, acoustic guitars weaponized into fractal dissonance. These decrepit acoustics share the anti-melody principles of no wave music but not the abrasiveness. The album is quirky, but it’s easy to listen to. Suppleness is part of the approach.
Dust Devil is the opus of this sound, with Naemi gathering together a murderer’s row of young experimentalists as featured guests, talented people who dot the Bandcamps of Motion Ward or 3 X L, whose label head, Shy, appears on this album. They perform an array of musical talents, spoken-word poetry, strumming an acoustic guitar, or cooing the sweetest of nothings over beats that gurgle, buzz, and pulse.
The album opens with “It Feels So Good” featuring “Erika”—who is also known as the fairly popular R&B musician Erika de Casier; so much more well known is she than the rest of the artists it feels like they thought it would be gauche to use her full name—a hazy sweep of sound. The song could easily have been an instrumental; alone it would be a nice piece of ambient music, made of the gentlest version of something between a baby whale’s call and the digitized sound of a trumpet mixed with a harp-like digital twinkle. But with de Casier’s singing, which she does slow and soft enough that she’s almost whispering, the song turns from relaxing to seductive. Brian Eno could never. “It Feels So Good” is likely the closest thing the album has to a “song.” It’s a smart choice to have it open the album, a proper immersion into the album’s warmth before journeying onto the next 13 songs which blur together as they flit in and out of cohesion. Ideas are developed, actualized, and abandoned. There’s not always a ton of development, but not much preciousness either; curiosity reigns.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM