They may break champagne bottles over the bows of ships to inaugurate their voyage, but Benjamin Dauer took a plosive-free approach when he tested out his newly rebuilt studio. He reconstructed the studio “from the ground up,” and then set about an initial work, built much like his studio largely from pre-existing pieces but experienced in a new light. In other words — his words — the track, titled “Driving Stage,” is “a little remix.”
The result is four minutes of gentle meander, the melody less a matter of sublimation than of diffusion. The low-level presence is not so much a concern of inherent tension as it is of lovely, widely distributed spaciousness, abetted by an enticingly slow pace. Writes Dauer of the effort, speaking in particular of some of the newly installed equipment, “I realize it’s very naive to say, but it was really great being able to approach the mix by hand – turning actual EQ knobs instead of virtual ones on a screen.”
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/benjamindauer. More on Dauer, who is based in Washington, D.C., at benjamindauer.net.