Evan Caminiti's fourth solo album finds the
Barn Owl stalwart continuing to do what he loves best -- exploring the dark, atmospheric possibilities of electric guitar -- but in a way that introduces a slightly different focus, unsurprising given his core band's constant restlessness in both releases and performances. If anything,
Night Dust suggests a strange, striking confluence of everything from
This Mortal Coil's grinding industrial atmospherics and early
Slowdive instrumentals to guitar/electronics combinations by everyone from
Bill Laswell to
Steve Roach -- always suggestive of parallel work but insistent on finding its own distinct sound and logic, an exploration more than a re-creation. Certainly, both
Roach and, perhaps as a looming background figure,
Brian Eno figure into such songs as "Returning Spirits" and "Last Blue Moments," but
Caminiti takes the ideas of deep space and echoed tones as something to place guitar directly into, with drones aiming at a hushed, moodily peaceful place in the former song and acoustic guitar sliding into a void on the latter. The combination of acoustic/electric possibilities further calls to mind figures like
Dave Pearce and especially
Roy Montgomery, with the romantic swoop of "The River" being one of the better songs in the New Zealand guitarist's own achingly powerful vein in a long while. But while there's a constant set of contextual points to refer to, what increasingly becomes strongest and clearest about
Night Dust is how
Caminiti's own particular magpie aesthetic comes to the fore, from the chimes amid the drones of "A Memory or a Mirage" to the slow ebbing away of "Red Sun Blues," and how "First Light II" ends with distant fuzz and crumble and tape hiss along with beautiful guitar. ~ Ned Raggett