Midweek pick, January 17th, 2024: Nick Dunston's Skultura
Nick Dunston: Skultura (Tripticks Tapes/Staatsakt Rec.)
Nick Dunston: compositions, production, bass, prepared banjo, sampler, tape, vocals
Cansu Tanrıkulu: vocals, effects, electronics
Liz Kosack: synthesizer, vocals
Eldar Tsalikov: alto saxophone, Bb clarinet, vocals
Mariá Portugal: drums
Petter Eldh: co-production and Akai MPC
Bassist and composer Nick Dunston has quickly established himself as one of the most interesting up-and-coming musicians of the past five plus years. I first heard him on the album Mesophase by Zack Clarke, released in 2018, before grabbing my attention the following year with his impressive debut as leader Atlantic Extraction on Out Of Your Head Records. He has also played with Dave Douglas, Anna Webber and Ches Smith, but impressed me most of all as part of the sextet that made Mary Halvorson’s excellent Amaryllis, where he provided substantial propulsive energy to the music with his precise, meaty yet agile double bass playing. He is no less impressive on Halvorson’s Cloudward, which is released this coming Friday.
Last September, Dunston released another album under his own name, Skultura, which is something entirely different. It was recorded with some new friends from the music scene in Berlin, where he moved a few years ago, and is a strange and fascinating album. Made with a combination of acoustic instruments, electronics and voices both intelligible and unintelligible, creating patterns and sounds that twist and morph in various ways; a double bass line suddenly transforming into a MIDI bass, for example. At times, it sounds like something avant-rock veterans Aksak Maboul might have come up with. It also moves into mysterious and twisted electronic soundscapes, as well as the twitchy and mischievous, like Disco Volante era Mr. Bungle.