Dylan Henner - A Reason for Living (Phantom Limb)

Dylan Henner’s debut EP channels American minimalism and classic ambient to evoke the imaginary score to a stripped back science fiction film

As if unearthed from the deepest ocean floor, Dylan Henner’s debut EP arrives fully formed and slightly alien. It is American minimalism with hints of new age ambient and could be the soundtrack to a fiercely intelligent low budget science fiction picture whose meaning remains hidden, elliptical. A Reason for Living utilises known tropes in intriguing ways and there’s a beautiful symmetry to the EP, which showcases Henner’s structural abilities for organic ends.

The woozy affect of “I Had to Wash the Shirt I Lost” softens the edges of perception, before slinking away with found voices. “The Beach was Covered in Coral” is more rigorous in its form, with quietly building percussion and a mood that wouldn’t be out of place on Shane Curruth’s score for his own Upstream Color film. A malfunctioning cyber-biological creature attempts to speak out from between multiverses in “Marie Fell Asleep With Her Shoes On”, but its words flap like plastic sheets in an abandoned factory. It’s a forceful haunting that is already spent. The repetitive percussion returns and builds from the previous number, confidently recalling Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. Dylan Henner births a sparse yet enveloping world across these two tracks and in just over seven minutes.

“Angels Made a Ring Around Them” opens with field recordings possibly culled from the dream state of Interzone, at least the Burroughs-via-Cronenberg version, before blossoming into cascading serenity. It thus becomes the most outright ambient piece on the EP, the sonic equivalent of time-lapse photography and a summation of the time-lapse minimalism of A Reason for Living.

phantomlimblabel.bandcamp.com