Note: I already reviewed this.  My method of “review it and then I’ll remember how I feel about it” apparently failed.  On the good side of things, I agreed with myself.  So, y’know, go me.

4 out of 5

Label: VHF

Produced by: Simon Wickham-Smith

3 minimalist pieces “for organ, voice, woodwind, and digeridoo.”  If I add in that the organ and voice piece (‘Objects Appearing’) is 30 minutes and the digeridoo piece (‘Foralicem’) is 20 minutes, that should give you a pretty good idea of what this is, and whether or not you’ll be game for it.  Wickham-Smith belongs to the more experimental end of VHF output, as opposed to their psych / folk or noise stuff, and Butterfly Dust was apparently his first solo CD post some years of working with Richard Youngs.  (And if you know Richard Youngs wildly varying output, that should also give you a touchpoint for the genre we’re dealing with here.)

The name of the album conjures up something precious; something beautiful that can be dismissed with a breeze.  And such is the nature of the majority of this disc – the brilliant ‘Objects’ and the woodwind piece ‘Quamutiik.’  ‘Objects’ is brilliant, and, if listened in focus, wonderfully affecting, an organ-ic (hyuck) spin on Alvin Lucier’s ‘I Am Sitting in a Room’ experiment: one tone, warm, warbling, is joined a couple of minutes in by a harmonizing tone, and a couple of minutes beyond that another…  This builds for about 15 minutes, when Simon breaks the drone element to drop out / add in some tones, akin to playing a few notes.  As the track has evolved up to this point, the sudden change is staggering, and sets the stage for the mercurial vocals that float in for a little while at about twenty minutes.  And finally, over the last five minutes or so, the piece winds down, removing tones as it added them initially, but at a slightly quicker pace.  Sure, this isn’t party music, but if drone / minimalism is your scene, this is pretty grand stuff.

And then as a counterpoint we get ‘Quamutiik,’ a much shorter piece that’s a loose (improvised?) set of notes performed via woodwind.  The arc here is in how the performance starts very reedy, barely making noise (indeed, just blowing air at some points) and then builds to much more confident tones in the middle of the track, before, as with ‘Objects,’ returning to lighter, less pronounced sounds.  The comparative breadth of the piece and the nature of the instrument – much more hollow than the organ – make it an interesting and, again, affecting track.

Unfortunately, the synergy drops for ‘Foralicem,’ which is straight drone (y’know, via digeridoo) without much variation or growth.  The ‘doo’s noise is also somewhat distancing, neither warm or cold, and the only extra element the track has to offer is one of duality – different pitches playing in each ear.  But they’re playing the same pitches, at about the same rate, for the entire runtime, so this doesn’t seem to accomplish anything.  At a shorter runtime, this wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but stretched to near the length of ‘Object,’ it definitely hinders things… although it’s nice that, when the disc is on repeat, ‘Object’s actually flows pretty well coming off of ‘Foralicem.’  And ‘Butterfly Dust’ still earns a top rating for Wickham-Smith’s ability to build much from so little on the first two tracks.