The sound of loneliness, loss, and a surreal ghost town can make you feel as if a pin-drop has landed upon the quiet streets of a dystopian, futuristic landscape. There’s some truth to that. Watching the trailer for the upcoming release of the video game Cronos: The New Dawn which takes place in a grim world of a post-apocalyptic Eastern European survival horror, I just vision the music from the realms of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, and Popol Vuh.
That’s the first thought that came to my mind, but delving into the world of Peter Chilvers’ Dust 4, you know that this will be a mournful time of looking at the destruction and the abandoned buildings will make you go inside and think of a place that once was, has now been stuck in the past. This is the fourth instalment from Chilvers’ Dust series, unveiling a breathtaking environment with uncertainty and the hope for a new beginning.
With his collaboration with Brian Eno, co-founder of Burning Shed with Tim Bowness and Peter Morgan, working with Natalie Imbruglia and Karl Hyde, and as a software developer for the 1996 PC game Creatures, Chilvers has an incredible resume for this Cambridge-based designer. The first three series of the Dust stories go back in their EP days going from 1 to 3 in a collection of honouring not just his collaborator with Brian Eno for two decades, but to capture the spirit and essence of his work.
On the fourth volume, it is the first album in its full-length to the series on the Curious Music label, clocking in at 2 hours and 4 minutes. Listening to this album, there’s a sense of quietness, jazz, droning textures, meditation, classical piano, under watery landscapes, sleep music, and mystical sequences floating into view. Chilvers has really up the ante when it comes to such an incredible form of electronic music.
Peter has come to form by bringing the Dust story in its full form hopefully. Taking us into the different forms of space and time, eerie fogs coming over the horizon and hundreds of galaxies invoke the wonders of different planets to discover with life, honesty, and its true nature by researching their species of what they do for a living.
Chilvers isn’t just going on making his instruments come to life, he’s making sure everything is done right by creating the perfect formula and giving listeners an adventure they’ll never forget. It brings it to a recommending standstill.
