Duster - Contemporary Movement
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August 22nd, 2000.
Duster's sophomore album Contemporary Movement feels like a brutalist structure, not too far from the building - Seattle-Tacoma International Airport - which will spend the rest of eternity sitting on the album's cover. Slow-moving. Bulky. Not the most pleasant experience, but a necessary one. More necessary than the wanted one. The flipside of a blissful state. The needed comedown. The inevitable reminder. The calloused helping hand. San Jose's Duster continued on their heavy-hearted mission to capture the sonic sound of drowning with bricks strapped to your butt. You can try, but the outcome has already been scribed, in stone.
In a semi-surrealistic-state of being let down by those you never needed and never will - the mind finds ways to overcome what you already know; it fights back at your being. Mindsets conquered long ago still bubble somewhere near the surface. Close enough to feel but far enough away to put up with. A half-hearted approach to everything. By-passing the only route. Tip-toeing around the feelings which stir inside. Don't wake them, please. Enemies are at the gate; the gate's a lot closer to home than initially thought. The clock tik-toks back-and-forth-and-back. Indecisive as to whether it wants to continue on; it can't take the inherent weight on its shoulders. It all hangs in the balance, and falls short every time. The life that was once so full of things to make it so has come to a grinding halt. The empire of dust has hit a rough patch.
Chained to the everyday and the disappointment that it brings. The heavy knowing that your eyes will open once again. Ready or not, here he comes. A heart that falls apart upon arrival. A million pieces from one. A headache like a ten-tonne truck. Lightning in a bottle in a brain. Ghosts in the ether. The phantom facing you. The phantom facing me. Muted notes. The curtains open ever-so slowly to reveal you were up to the same tricks; caught in the same webs; thinking the same thoughts; feeling the same feelings. The Summer's gone, changed hand again. Fallen out of favour. The pathological pill connoisseur's prescriptive case is being sorted. The months spent away are on the horizon. The self-sufficient state which has to be lived in order to understand. The inside all emotion; the outside all perspective.
Every time I hear this album it sounds different to how I remembered it being. It shifts around like toys when the kids go off to school. An essence which is hard to find elsewhere emanates out of it, ever-so-slowly it spins.
