ConcertsDummy
Brudenell Presents... There has long been an obsession with what the “future of music” looks like. How it will be constructed, perceived, analyzed, interacted with. So much brainpower is put into what’s next, because we always want to be one step ahead. Culturally prescient, enlightened, on the cutting edge. But what if you sidestep all that noise? What if a band, freed from the rat race and trendiness, embraces insularity to the point it somehow becomes the future? With do you love the color of the sky?, Dummy crafts the perfect anti-zeitgeist record, freezing you into their incorporeal moment of time. If 2024’s Free Energy (and its subsequent remix album, Bubbelibrium DLC) evoked the spirit of Madchester and the optimism of the rave, then Dummy’s newest couches itself in a lyrical skepticism that recalls the best of post-rock and drone-think Seefeel, Windy and Carl, Laika, or Disco Inferno-while playfully adorned in jubilant pop hues of early Björk, The Sundays, and Madonna's Ray of Light. With songs that touch on Earth’s climate degradation (as heard on the propulsive album opener“ April Limousine”), A.I. and the devaluation of art (on lead single “Full Spectrum Dominance”), and how we’ve been conditioned into accepting the surveillance state (on the penultimate album track “N of 1”), do you love the color of the sky? is their most politically trenchant record, and yet their most inviting. Breakbeats and the captivating voice of keyboardist Emma Maatman belie a sleight hand-as the listener becomes enveloped by Dummy’s unshakable grooves, they’ve subconsciously accrued a vision of a new radical politic. As Maatman expresses, “ A.I. could not exist without the harvesting of our data and using all of humanity’s intellectual property and collective work.” Don’t worry about the heavy themes though; DYLTCOTS? straight up rips. Guitarist Joe Trainor and drummer Alex Ewell are specific in their commitment to reverence for the form, while the melodic toplines of Maatman,
