Everyday Dust - The Relic Room

Released: July 19

Everyday Dust’s latest release has the appearance of an album but actually is more than that. The Relic Room is the beginning of an archive of sorts, initially starting off with ten tracks that were recorded sometime between the late 90s and the present day. Much of these are those pieces an artist would come up with as an exercise or maybe a few things that didn’t quite fit on an album. Essentially, this release aims to be a sort-of ongoing b-sides album of forgotten treasures. Now, even with being a patchwork of old tracks, the vibes remain fairly consistent even if some tracks show their age a little more with finely aged tape saturation. The initial ten tracks are a bit of a grab bag of different ideas, but there are a few that stood out to me in particular. 

“The Impossibility of Everything” begins with a rather muted bit of ambience that slowly sweeps in to be later joined by a rather exciting and tense-ish melodic arpeggio. It feels reminiscent of something you might hear on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries or something similar, which is particularly a nice vibe. “(To Cut A Long Story Short) I Mossed My Mind” comes in strong with the main synth and a nice little mix in of some twinkly percussion. I think what was interesting about this one was just the unexpected brightness of it, feeling surprisingly upbeat with just a touch of dark vibes. “Dreams” comes across as the most subtle of all the tracks due to a peculiar thinness to its overall sound. There’s no need for pulsing basses or walls of pads, just a relaxed and slightly elegiac melody joined by a bit of minimal percussive textures. 

Overall, it’s a rather interesting collection at debut. It is always interesting to hear the bits that an artist previously felt was better left on a decaying tape or hard drive. There’s always at least a couple treasure in there and this is a fun little box of tracks to dig through.