Dogs Versus Shadows & Nicholas Langley - Salt Coast

 

Released: November 1

I hadn’t heard much from Dogs Versus Shadows for quite some time, but this latest collaboration album from him and Nicholas Langley feels like an excellent re-introduction to his particular style. Salt Coast is a rather slow and low album, feeling a bit like a simmering tension through the whole runtime. Dark and sparse aesthetics carry on in a blend of synthetic textures, field recordings, keys, and other assorted odds and ends that assemble a deeply atmospheric vibe that also has a strangely concrete and tactile feel to it. I find “Feckless Ophelia” to be a good encapsulation of this aesthetic - with its siren-like noises and deep reverberations that bring this idea of concrete sounds in blank spaces to the forefront. 

There’s plenty of other examples of these odd sounds placed in weird spaces, but not all have such a dark and dingy quality to them. “A Hoax Body At The Foot Of A Hoax Cliff” combines these dingier sounds in the form of a growling and tearing low simmer of noise with some rather pure sounding synth pads that rise and fall in serene arcs, seemingly in competition with the noise as each tries to drown the other out. 

Near the end of the album is where things getting stranger. The last few tracks seem to ramp up the noise and nonsense to new levels with the pinnacle of the noise coming in “Everywhere Budgies.” As this track ramps up in noise and oddity, it becomes incrementally louder and more abrasive until falling off completely into garbled words combing through dusty electronics. Then, for the final track, we get an oddly zen sounding outro in “Stone Path Ascent.” It almost feels a bit out of place here, but is a welcome little ending for this otherwise dysthymic feeling album, shedding just the littlest bit of flickering neon light on album.