A ‘sonic tinkerer’ and ‘aural experimenter’, Achy Dromedary is a Portland (Oregon, USA) based musician who makes the kinds of sounds that I love to write about but find the most difficult to approach the page with. I will inevitably fail in surmising their endeavours in any adequately holistic or encompassing manner, but I shall try to brush over things that might provide glimmers of the many intangible and ambiguous nuances that float amid their work. Those of you who go on to adventure onwards into their material will no doubt uncover vastly more to yourselves.
On the face of things, their music presents the kind of experimentation that resists an emulsification into any overly gratuitous sort of psychedelic ‘chill-wave’ mind-fuck fest. With this I’d like to think it instantly becomes more accomplished, credible and intriguing. For something constructed of so much synth, sampling and re-sampling, it feels distinctly real. With this I should also imagine Achy Dromedary arrives at the sort of over-arching aim of any electro-experimental music, something abstract and pertinent, ambiguous yet distinct. This is something I find myself repeating a lot about the music I most appreciate from this broad genre, (see Roger Sellers).
The music is constructed upon soft pulses and beats, upon which more sharp and brittle sounds playfully slide in and out. The overall orchestration is placed together with deft and gentle touches that are careful enough not to rip the song from its delicate roots. Its appeal is built around comfortability and an enduring allure. From here it progressively grows into the ears, without an outstanding moment of immediate tuneful gratification to strike the listener or lift them from the bed within which they have settled in any singular recognisable sonic movement, a particularly valuable trick in any modern artist’s tool-belt. Like a ghost in the night, I consequently find it bearing the touch of something that feels more than the sum of its parts. But then again, maybe that’s just because I like it?
