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The face of Blue Lake is American-born and Copenhagen-based Jason Dungan, a musician who seems to draw on his experience as a visual artist and filmmaker to construct delicate, intricate layers of sound using various instruments and textures. A catalyst in Jason’s creative life was the discovery of an old ornate zither at a Swedish flea market, a find that inspired him to begin making his own instruments and focusing primarily on music.
Weft, considered a mini-album at around thirty minutes, follows on from 2023’s Sun Arcs, something of a breakthrough album, and paves the way for another full-length release, coming at some point this year. But Weft feels like anything but a minor work, with the music being as considered and precise as anything Blue Lake has released before. The link to visual arts is apparent too, not least in the album’s title, also the title of the artwork on the album’s cover, created by Jason’s partner, Maria Zahle. The fine layers of fabric, consisting of neat, straight lines, wavy pieces and frayed edges, as well as a bleached piece of wood, suggest uniformity as well as experimentation and old traditions, details that can apply to the music within.
This balance is felt on tracks like the ten-minute Tatara, a beautifully paced full band piece (and first take) that sees a fluid but regular guitar line blend with Carolyn Goodwin’s bass clarinet, Tomo Jacobson’s double bass and Pauline Hogstrand’s viola. For the percussion, Jason used found materials, like a log drum and a bicycle wheel, giving the music a certain strangeness that brought to mind Sally Anne Morgan’s experimental Appalachian Cups album.
A song like closer Strata is more reminiscent of Andrew Tuttle’s work. Although a live recorded solo 36-string zither piece, as opposed to Tuttle’s typically layered songs, the pace of the tune, plus the number of strings working to create melodies and countermelodies, brings to mind the wonderful sound of Tuttle’s banjo, particularly on last year’s Another Tide, which was effectively a solo record.
Repetition is also at the heart of this work, with songs like The Forest, another almost hitting the ten-minute mark, using a picked, layered acoustic line as the core to a song that brings in a minimal bass part, along with some lovely piano notes, clarinet and flute. It is an intricate piece, but one that fully demonstrates the skill of this composer, with each instrument firmly in place and each important in the crafting of this spare yet rich soundscape.
So, a mini-album Weft may be, but it feels like a major work and its concise length feels appropriate, with the delicate, complex music drifting away after five songs and leaving us grateful for the experience and wondering where this craftsman will take us next.
Weft is out now on Tonal Union
Order via Bandcamp: https://bluelake1.bandcamp.com/album/weft
