Jon Dale - Last Blues

“If music tells a story, that story is grafted onto the music. It's not in the music.”

So says Kurt Ralske of Ultra Vivid Scene, a comment made in conversation with Jon Dale and recalled in the press release for Last Blues, a compilation of music made by Dale as Moth in the late 90s/early 2000s. It's a perfect way to come at these five name-and-wordless compositions, each an exercise in sonority rather than narrative. Dale is a music writer of some esteem and with interests that traverse all manner of sounds, though with his own music (something i only recently learned he made despite knowing him for some time) seems to gravitate more towards the impressionistic, organising tone and repetition into originless loops that don't so much start or end as greet you where you (and it) stand. Think of it as perpetual sound, harmonics echoing into the void and then back, both heavy and /or weightless. The minimalist avant garde of Tony Conrad, La Monte Young, Mary Jane Leach (ala Pipe Dreams) et al seem like the basic touchstones, though i also thought of that incredible Werner Durand piece, Hemispheres, and it's also clear to see the influence of Kontakta (something Dale previously switched me on to, of course) and associated late 90s abstract electronic music in here, too. Perhaps Ralske is right, and there is no inherent story to tell. But Dale, so good at doing it for others, deserves a little narrative of his own. Add another line to the history of experimental Australian music. That one will be a big book...