Dean Hurley leaves the town of Twin Peaks behind with his second volume of reality-disintegrating ambient soundscapes under the Anthology Resource banner

Dean Hurley has more claim to the epithet Lynchian than most, having worked closely with David Lynch and run his Asymmetrical Studio for close to a decade and a half. His very particular sonic fingerprints are all over Lynch’s film and music output from this period. Not only does his aesthetic chime with that of Lynch, but adds something inimitable into the mix. This was strikingly apparent on Anthology Resource Vol I, which collected his reality-disintegrating ambient drones and nightmare room tones from Twin Peaks season 3; it goes to show how much of that particular Lynchian journey into sound was in fact realised by Hurley.

Disappointingly, due to licensing issues, the expected vinyl release of Anthology Resource Vol I is no longer to be. However, subsequent volumes – starting here – will indeed exist in the physical realm. Hurley intends this series as a library music resource curated from and for weird, eerie and daring excursions into cinema and television. Like Berberian Sound Studio made flesh.

Dean Hurley operates in a potent area between sound design and ambient soundtrack. “Edge of the Known” is an out of body sonic experience preparing for quantum leap. A steady drift of ambient sound builds like a dam, whilst “The Curved Arrow of Time” spills over the threshold, recordings of reality modulated into an alien voice that ebbs and flows. It’s disorientating, a deep dive into the uncanny. “Dissension” (un)naturally occurs on the other side. A piercing, sustained almost-human howl is pitched high and evokes the appearances of the black monolith in 2001, additionally hinting at the feeling of wrongness during the opening desert scenes of The Exorcist. Suffice to say that Hurley takes the listener to out there and in there territories through the course of the record; places where no compass can operate, let alone provide guidance.  

On “Exotic Matter”, he dares dream the fearsome beauty of past, present and future combined, in an analogue to the Laura Palmer in a golden sphere sequence of the third season of Twin Peaks. The unimaginable expanse of the universe is boiled down to its essence and captured, albeit briefly, before it must dissolve back into time. 

With “Far Boundaries”, Hurley takes a sojourn away from pure sound design and soundscape mode, crafting an addictive horror-synth electronic transmission instead. It’s as if Chris Carter made a modular synth score to a more Kubrick than King version of Stranger Things. A cut that should be played at reality-shaking volume during a liminal rave, possibly resulting in the opening of a portal. The other Chris Carter might also spring to mind over the course of listening to Philosophy of Beyond, for his most famous creation The X-Files deals with similar questions and concerns. Mulder and Scully are thus revealed as equal partners with Throbbing Gristle in the sonic world of Dean Hurley.

The accompanying video to the project (described as a teaser documentary) is designed as an artefact from the late 1970s or early 1980s, transferred onto VHS and degraded further over time. Mysteries of the unexplained are explored in fragmentary fashion, as if channel surfing the esoteric television highways of an out of time America. It could be viewed as an American response to Julian House’s video pieces for Ghost Box and Peter Strickland. Although a more apposite comparison might be the Dharma Initiative videos within Lost; mysterious, intriguingly incomplete communications via a decaying format. Either way, the teaser is the perfect showcase for this essential set of spooked library music and zoned out transmissions from the edge.  

deanhurley.bandcamp.com

Stewart Gardiner
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