With some albums, all is takes to draw you in is the artwork. Sometimes it really is that simple, and Chicago’s Mute Duo (percussionist Skyler Rowe and pedal steel / organist Sam Wagster) have that sort of vibe.
Following their 2020 debut release, Lapse in Passage (an album that featured Emma Hospelhorn and Tortoise/ Eleventh Dream Day’s Douglas McCombs), Migrant Flocks sees the duo continuing their wistful journey of melding together ’90s Thrill Jockey-inspired post-rock with ambient passages of post-country.
While post-country continues to go from strength-to-strength, the reason why I believe it’s here to stay a lot longer than most other sub-genres is because its purveyors are constantly finding room to manoeuvre within the space. There’s a lot to work with, and not one record neither sounds the same nor feels generic. And with Migrant Flocks, Mute Duo are the latest to bring their own ideas to the table, taking remnants of the past and creating their own sound world to deliver them in the present.
Migrant Flocks is an album that summons you, and opening track, Sunken Light, is like that obscure shape in the distance that you are drawn to. With an organ that whines with a hymnal, pre-burial intensity, Wagster’s pedal steel is like a gentle echo from the angels. And here they summon the spirit in question.
Mute Duo - Migrant FlocksIt leads into The Ocean Door. Most acts would place a track like this towards the backend of their album: not Mute Duo who put their best foot forward. A stirring miasma in long-form composition, with flute and pedal steel drifting through spacious rhythms, The Ocean Door has all the hallmarks of music made for the heavens.
With The Ocean Door, Mute Duo just about reach the apex of their creative arc, however Migrant Flocks is a showcase of artistic diversity rather than the peaks and troughs. Wagster and Rowe have flitted around the underground scene for years – Wagster accompanying the likes of Eli Winter, Fruit Bats, and The Cairo Gang while Rowe has been a part of Anatomy of Habit, Nubiles, Picked Clean, Rash, Still, and Skyler Rowe Quartet.
That range begins with Trust Lanes. With tight rhythms and rolling waves of synth, it sees Mute Duo unveil elements of drone and krautrock in a beautiful mash-up which sounds like Stereolab trading blows with droneroom. Then there’s the breezy twang and metallic echoes of Moon in the Flood. A pastoral, slow-motion blur that has you reaching for Blood Meridian. Unlike Night Guides that is part Ragged Glory-era Neil Young and part Dirty Three. A barnyard freakout that swells and splinters the woodwork.
Music in this realm is always fit for cinematic consumption and Mute Duo give us a dose of it with Land Musik. A song that calls upon the imagery of husks swaying in the breeze. It’s an escapist composition that everyone needs to hear at some point, and as Blake Conley has given us many of these moments this year under the aforementioned droneroom moniker, ambient composition in any form will always make space for new exponents. And while Mute Duo have been around for a while, with Migrant Flocks they deliver one of the shining beacons from the experimental sound world this year.
Migrant Flocks American Dreams Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
