Infinite Love by Dustin Wong

Dustin Wong, like many of us, dove into the world of music and art as an unhappy youth looking to rebel against certain ideals and "absolute truths" that contrasted his own beliefs. A twisting path of punk discovery and a growing respect for sonic visionaries like Jimi Hendrix, Brian Wilson, John Fahey, and Brian Eno led Dustin to further pursue his muse. He eventually wound up at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he met and co-founded the critically acclaimed band Ponytail. In addition to his film studies, Dustin was also a founding member of Ecstatic Sunshine, whose music hinted more at the direction he would eventually take in this his solo debut.

On August 18th 2009 the proposition of playing a solo show (August 18th, whose numerical meaning has since taken on a special meaning to Dustin as "a gleam of time between two eternities") was set before him by a friend. Dustin didn't have any material to perform, and had never before performed solo. Excited by the proposition, he sat down and started writing what would become the first 15 minutes of Infinite Love. Taking inspiration from something John Fahey once said, "I was playing guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head. So I was really composing for a full orchestra”, Dustin was deeply moved and inspired by this way of thinking about the creative process. It had a profound effect on his working with one instrument on many melodic and literal layers as well as emotional ones. Working with a simple assembly of pedals: an octave, distortion, loop, envelope filter, and a couple of delays, Dustin began to take this idea and make it his own.

In most cases his compositions start with a simple repeating melody. Dustin slowly fills the space between each note with layered and looped guitar phrases, and continues to build on this pattern until his "orchestra" fully blooms. While the textures vary greatly, the sound never becomes a cacophony, but rather a delicate web-like base to suspend his various melodic lines from. The looped layers are then further manipulated via the pedals to have an evolving set of meter and timbres for the aural narrative. The only instrument apart from guitar is a sparingly used drum machine.

For Infinite Love (a reference to a psychedelic experience of Dustin's), he wanted to focus on the potential of an actual album and the journey from beginning to end. This journey or musical process is increasingly being lost in the digital era, where often the focus is on tracks or collections of tracks. To highlight that journey, Infinite Love is presented as a double album, each with the same opening and different paths to the final codas. It is the listener’s choice which path to take. Dustin puts it thus, "In Infinite Love the listener gets two choices. I think of them as twins, a brother and a sister, living their lives, then reuniting.” The album will be available on both double LP and double CD, each with a bonus DVD. The LP version comes with an exclusive bonus EP entitled Indigo and Crystal. The DVD allows you to choose which musical path you'd like to have accompany the film, with the hope that the two different musical versions will change the experience of the movie. Dustin will be touring the US and Europe in the near future. It is quite something to behold the solo performance of so many intricate and complex layers. Those who have had the pleasure of experiencing the catharsis that is Ponytail live, will not be disappointed by this stunning display.

The sounds of Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa are a coalescence of the complexities of life, with the sheer joy of imaginative creation. Based in Tokyo Japan, Wong and Minekawa are part of a growing DIY community. Their artistic focus is to create the unexpected. They use their considerable technical skill to create the psychedelic, surreal, and conceptual, with dexterity and inventiveness.