Paul Duncan
To an Ambient Hollywood
Hometapes

Among other, more obvious musical influences, Georgian née Texan Paul Duncan cites Luis Buñuel, of Un Chien Andalou renown, as a source of clout. This wouldn't mean much to a listener unless you couldn't shake that film's close-up of a blade being taken to a naked eyeball or the armies of crawling ants. These two images, indelibly marked somewhere in your subconscious, imbue, too, the 'scapes that color Duncan's debut.

There's absolutely nothing painful about To an Ambient Hollywood, though. Duncan does not turn stomachs through images of crude, invasive surgery. But this album nevertheless resonates with the intimacies of bedroom operations — that is, a man's closed-door tinkerings. With the subtlety that a razor blade on an eyeball lacks, Duncan creeps through nooks of careful sound.

A tiny crumb can sustain an entire ant farm; a single, wistful mood can float through all of Ambient Hollywood without the slightest note of weariness.

The album begins with fluttering whirs and busy guitar plucks setting the scene. While opener "1 in 22" circles beautifully about, trying to lose you in its commotion, a distinctive discourse between beats and melody has begun. The drums say, "Sashay." The guitars and other random noises say, "Spin! Be dizzy!" You can't do both and still look cool, so you sit back and soak in the tension, the apparent ease with which it's all bound together. Tucking innumerable complexities into neatly tunneled songs, Duncan somehow manages to still sound sincere.

With one hand each in the wires and on the strings, Duncan crafts impeccably crisp yet layered songs. They fade into one another without losing themselves in the din. The chitter-chatter of "Film Life" gives way to the sway of "Swam an Ocean," where violins pull soft waves of noise over gentle sonar pinging far below the surface. Circling around the considerate chorus of "I hope the ocean doesn't mind," "Swam an Ocean" is a tidy ballad amid the clean clutter of the rest of Hollywood.

The skies aren't all clear, though. While "The Sharks Were Gentle" bares no teeth and "Letdownville" is straightforward, folk-tinged pop, other tunes dip into the mire. Mournful horns tug their way over Duncan's lazy pleas (among them, "We could make it happen") in "Don't Look Now." "As the Ship Sank," all churning guitar and barely decipherable "dadada's" sprinkled with sustained xylophone chimes, is the musical equivalent to sinking while the sun makes diamonds on the water. Here and there throughout the remaining tracks, snippets of inane conversations make their way into the mix, like little reminders of the construction of this album.

Hollywood wishes it could sound this way. To an Ambient Hollywood actually does. It cuts in, no blade required.

— Lavina Lee (lavina at flakmag dot com)