Amazing music lurks in the underwaters of online. It's where fans gather in true awe, finding new friends to whisper with via the “URL” for hours on end and exploring the beginnings and ends of someone’s work until it has gotten way too late and it is time to go to bed.
Duster, a project composed of Clay Parton, Canaan Dove Amber, and Jason Albertini, began in the '90s in San Jose, CA; some call it slowcore or space rock or post rock, but Duster, to me, has always been a place of solace, outside the lines of musical definition. When I first started listening, I found myself immediately connected — I was 18 and my friends Wyatt and Spencer put on Stratosphere for me in their apartment in West LA. Instantly, I was stunned. The turns and licks of Duster immediately had me under a spell— It felt like water, something naturally flowing that already lived in a part of my conscious that I hadn’t had access to. It moved me tremendously, inspired me beyond measure. I began to explore their demos through YouTube and what.cd (RIP), racking the corners of the internet through Christmas, Dust, their covers of Misfits songs (which got me into the Misfits), and countless other demos submerged in the waters.
Discovering Duster gave me a new vision into what music, and all art, can be: an allusion to a reality of creation, a metaphor for pop. To me, their songs have always felt like pop in disguise, leaving the listener the job to find that essence as it is not fed blatantly. The listener is the alchemist with Duster, as their lines and guitars stubbornly bleed anticipation, sometimes to no actual resolve.
— Harmony Tividad, Girlpool
(Photo Credit: left, Gina Canavan; right, P Squared; screenshots, Harmony Tividad)
