Tyler Potts

The Deluge

Dragons Eye

The significance of The Deluge, the title of Tyler Potts’ second release for Seattle’s Dragons Eye, is somewhat elusive since the music contained within is neither a torrent of noise nor a downpour of strong emotions. Rather, the 11 short tracks form a collection of gently stirring, almost pastoral accompaniments to sentimental rememberings. The new album follows in the same vein as his previous release for Dragons Eye, 52 Songs, a DVD set of MP3s (written at the rate of one per week for a year), that clocks in at over three hours and is also accompanied by the Music for Dance collaboration with Heather Budd. The essence of both 52 Songs and The Deluge is Potts’ collection of thrift store instruments and musical toys, which are carefully partnered and gently layered to create a varied analog palette, at times underpinned by an almost ethnic element. Potts claims a fascination with Malian music, but one could also imagine the gamelan being a strong influence as well, particularly on tracks like “Charting.” The sound design is clever, but left simple, with the computer retained to capture the sound with only the bare minimum of tweaking and blending.

This gentle respect for recognizable sound is the cornerstone of the album’s air of sentimentality and intimacy. Indeed, it is the moments when Potts tries to manipulate things the most that the album comes undone. On “The Floor,” for instance, he tries to derail the rhythm with a flourish of percussive loops low in the mix, but somehow misses the mark and derails the track instead. Moments such as these are rare, however, with the majority of the album successfully reaching a level of consistent beauty and emotional clarity. The album’s opening tracks, for example, weave nicely together to set the tone of far-away youth. The middle of the album drops the sensitivity in favor of a more sinister sound, particularly on tracks “The Rider Back” and “Pilots,” but the return to the bucolic ambience by the album’s finale adds to a sense of completeness to the work. On the other hand, the personal emotions on display for the majority of the tracks here prohibit the universal depth of evocation found in similar works such as Susumu Yokota´s seminal Sakura album from emerging. Whether this is due to Potts’ reluctance to interfere with the sounds, at the expense of sculpting carefully crafted transformations within each track, is difficult to say, but The Deluge nonetheless has plenty to offer and plenty to return to.

Chris Mann