Dwight Ashley

Four

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If there were any question concerning Ashley's intent to provide the listener with a psychologically provocative experience, the cover art for Four - a colorless, mangled hand jutting forth from a bucolic backdrop, with distorted clouds as a back drop.

tracks

: 1 I Saw A Thousand Swallows
: 2 Machina Ex Deus
: 3 Stranded (No.2)
: 4 The Art of Standing
: 5 Holes Within Holes
: 6 I Swallowed A Thousand Saws
: 7 The Mighty Fallen Rust in the Sun
: 8 Best of Times

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By Location

USA: Ohio

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notes

Expressionism gives primacy to the emotions. It is an explorative, subjective awareness of anxiety, sordidness, and disorder beneath surface order, well-being, and beauty."
- John C. and Dorothy L. Crawford, Expressionism in 20th Century Music

These opening lines from a textbook describing an often overlooked and less understood artistic movement of the early 20th century are a startlingly apt description of the recent release by composer Dwight Ashley, Four.

Nearly a hundred years after the seminal works of such expressionist composers as Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives, Ashley has taken the ambient/electronic sound palette and produced a nakedly neo-expressionistic reinterpretation of the genre that is at once exquisitely beautiful and profoundly disturbing.

Beneath the deliciously gorgeous surface serenity of Ashley's compositions is an edgy discordance that suggests all is not well in this otherwise pretty world. A subtle intimation of malaise on Four's ethereal first track progresses into detachment, alienation, and finally psychosis in subsequent tracks, culminating in an arresting, hallucinatory dirge that sounds eerily like the soundtrack to an execution.

If there were any question concerning Ashley's intent to provide the listener with a psychologically provocative experience, the cover art for Four - a colorless, mangled hand jutting forth from a bucolic backdrop, where distorted clouds intimate something about to go awry - leaves no doubt. True to expressionist principles, Ashley has crafted his music to seduce listeners into travelling through his psyche, and in turn, their own.

reviews

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Featuring 11 hymns to the worldly religion of the mind...
author: Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END
Four (54'46") is the 2nd solo album by electronic musician Dwight Ashley. Featuring 11 hymns to the worldly religion of the mind, Ashley's frostbound expressionism is both familiar and new. The album's vast surround conveys a restless enormity. Ashley's work on Four is intentionally unsettling, calling attention to itself and the dignity of its "otherness". It's icy (but not inhibited), frigid (as in penetrating) and somewhat self-conscious as at more than one juncture the listener is challenged, dared, to follow on. His work is smooth, concentrating more on texture, tone and atmosphere than with narrative. There are no overt rhythms to count or melodies to grasp. Four is experienced on a more cerebral level. This work may seem remote, but Ashley's presence is felt throughout. At certain points he can be noticed nudging the quiet music along, while elsewhere he is found trying to contain the torrential flow of converging harmonies and conflicting timbres. The world of form is infinite. Four is an endeavor into tone, elegance and the complexity of intentions. Ashley puts into sound a vastness that only the imagination can contain.