Ellen Allien Loves Dust

Ellen Allien is such a prolific artists that she has probably put out more records than most modern bands combined. The girl is busy and over her 14 year career, she's probably put out over 50 records of some sort. Over that time, she's seen trends in dance music come and go and thanks to her uncanny skills and prowess behind a mixing console as well as the wheels of steel she has managed to survive them all. Her latest album, Dust is a testament to her desire to make music which is beyond what's trendy and cool while being incredibly trendy and cool

That being said, Dust is far from her normally minimalist nature and at times seems almost poppy. While she can't completely escape her past, she shapes it into something that now approaches a tune with new sounds and structures that sees elongated hooks wrapped around her sketchbook of textures, colors, and sounds. It's an ambient epic, that comes off as being completely widescreen and then polished to perfection with just a bit of pop thrown in for good measure. Filled with heaping amounts of atmospherics, the oddly timed beat or two, and a renewed sense of what makes songs cool, Dustsounds more like a BBC Radiophonic workshop with a beat set to it that something Ellen would normally record.

Listening to Dust is like listening to a series of Orb b-sides from from the early 90's mixed with a bit of electro to create something that's hypnotizingly appealing and a step forward for this normally abstract artist. While she never leaves the minimal approach completely behind, her ability to expand upon it and update it makes Dust entertaining. Not necessarily the bangin' techno album of the year, Dustis more like the perfect background music sort of album, as it's quiet klangs, bonks and bleeps are so easily assimilated into the actual hooks and songs that make this record up is barely noticeable at times. Nice work Miss Allien, you continue to impress as your discography grows and grows.