To be completely transparent, we selected our three favorite March 26th albums and began work on this DC "mini-review" campaign before actually listening to everything released last week. With well over 20 hours of music to process, can you blame us for wanting to get a jump on things? Taylor Deupree's Mur was literally the final album on our oft-updated "To Listen To" playlist, and we didn't even hear a second of it until all the other write-ups were completed and published. So when we finally got to spend time with this gorgeous album after dinner on Wednesday, we knew that we had one more review to complete.
Dauw Label has released three albums this year, and DC has covered them all. Maybe we should just assume all of Dauw's output is great, and align our writing calendar with their release calendar. We love everything about the Ghent-based tape label, from their featured artists (many of whom we've followed for years) to their signature presentation stylings.
Album artwork, taken from Dauw's Bandcamp page.
Explaining Mur and its peculiarly-titled songs, Taylor Deupree writes, "...there's always something about my music that's like a murmur." We've never made that connection ourselves, but you know, Deupree's description is pretty spot-on. His constructions are delicate and quiet, rarely rising over a whisper or a hum. The album's opener is an eleven-and-a-half-minute minimalist piano pattern, static occupying space between notes. Side A then moves into the music box twinkle of Mor. Side B opens with some varied textures, but then slides back into a sonic wash on (murmur). It is the shortest track, clocking in at just just over three minutes, but one that perhaps best exemplifies Deupree's unique musical voice. The closer, Mar, is a bit of an outlier. It, like the other tracks, lives mostly in a low drone, but Mar is somehow more sinister in tone. There are even some dissonant, unexpected blasts which, to us, feel more like exclamations than murmurs.
Together, Dauw and Deupree have teamed together to release a beauty. We've come to expect great work from them both, independently, so it's wonderful to hear (and see) their natural collaboration. Find the album on Dauw's Bandcamp, linked here, and it might even be "pay-what-you-will" for a little while longer. Hear a preview track below, if you're curious.
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