Amen Dunes – Dia (2009) [Locust] // Grade: A+

Dia is the classic story of musician self-imposes exile into the wide open wilderness to record an album raw with human emotion. It’s a tale that’s been woven before to different measures of success, but none nearly as authentic and inspired as the sounds created by Amen Dunes (Damen McMahon) when he left the city behind for a shack in the Catskill Mountains to record the gritty, lo-fi psych Dia.

Albums created in relative solitude can often sound overly introspective and lose the edge of the creator’s music, but such is not the case with Dia, an album that leads by example. McMahon channels his self-reflection deep inside, past the place of awareness and loneliness, to that buried spot where dreams and the psyche merge. The result isn’t clarity, or music that necessarily makes sense, but that’s the point. McMahon visits a place inside himself as remote as the the terrain that surrounds him. Sometimes his sounds loop endlessly, droning in a drugged-up stupor and other times he rumbles and pounds to the tune of a noisy guitar and indiscernible moans and wails. Stylistically, Dia is all over the place, but this stream of consciousness approach works startlingly well, allowing the listener to put themselves in McMahon’s shoes, close their eyes and disappear into the reverb. Dia is not an album that entirely lacks melody, inserting an acoustic, folk-kissed hook at just the right moment to break the cycle of gently lulling weirdness.

Listing the standout tracks of Dia is a pointless endeavor. It is an album rooted in context, a true musical project that challenges the listener to examine who they are and the world they call home. Dark, offbeat, mysterious and tear your heart out raw, Dia is the essence of outsider Americana and an easy contender for one of the year’s best releases.

- Scrooge McFuck