-->
Amen Dunes, the solo project of Damon McMahon, began with recordings made in the fall of 2006 in upstate New York. Those tapes were initially put on the shelf as personal recordings he never intended for release, and the following summer, McMahon moved to China and all but stopped making music. He would live in Beijing for the next few years, writing and recording only occasionally. With the release of DIA on Locust Music in 2009, however, he decided to move back to the States and form a band around Amen Dunes. Read more on Last.fm
My personal #1 of 2009.
The closest thing you can really compare this to is the outsider folk records that became cult collectors’ items from the late 60s early 70s – stuff like Dave Bixby, George Brigman, etc. This one, though, being from the 21st century, is filtered through the noise and lo-fi movements instead of folk-rock. In short, it’s the sound of one man, alone in a cabin, coming absolutely unhinged. Turn back now if that scares you, because there is something REAL about this record, some intangible quality that continues to haunt you long after you lift the needle from the groove.
It’s hard for me to talk about this record because it’s so… personal to me, in a way. You can’t understand anything McMahon says pretty much the whole way through, yet you feel like he’s singing it directly to you both because of the intensity of the aggression in the rockers (“Amen Dunes,” “Miami Beach”) and the intimacy of the softer numbers like “By the Bridal” and the stunning closer “Breaker.” Oftentimes the music sounds like disparate parts of unrelated songs, out of tune guitars and formless organ playing that can’t possibly be composed, but it all comes together to make a truly affecting whole. The album’s high point, though, and what I’d probably give to someone as the litmus test track, is side 2’s opener “White Lace,” a perfectly composed six minute piece which begins as one of the record’s softer, electric folk tracks before breaking down into absolute psychedelic noise fuckery in the second half. It may sound jarring but the transition is so smooth, so natural – well, it’s the record in a microcosm, and if you’re in the mood for a darker trip you can’t do much better than this.