If you were by chance one of the smaller audience to follow the music of Reid Dunn over the course of the past few years, then The Shimmering Hour might have not caught you off guard. Dunn has been putting out albums under the name Wisp for some time, but that major-label debut was so solidly-formed that many (including myself for a short period of time) thought there might be some sort of elaborate back story to it all.

There wasn’t, though, and Dunn has continued cranking out music, with a follow-up to the aforementioned album in the works already. In the meantime, he’s put out We Miss You, a digital-only release on the Rephlex label that collects 14 tracks created over the course of the past 6 years. Sure, it’s a bit of an odds-n-sods collection, but given the time span in creation time and sequencing, it’s actually better than one might expect from an album not getting some sort of hard-copy release. Just listening to the different cuts, it’s easy to tell that this is the same artist, and while the front-to-back quality isn’t there consistently, there are loads of tracks that pay off in a big way and some interesting diversions along the way.

Less successful are pieces like the longer, more ambient, “Uriollach” and “Myriad,” which sound more like an artist trying to figure out his own direction while mapping the latter exhaust fumes of Boards Of Canada, but there’s really only the one lull in the album where it really lags a bit.

As mentioned above, though, there’s more than enough joy on the release to make it worth snagging, and the one-two punch of “Happy Sneakers” and “Lords & Ladies” holds up with anything on The Shimmering Hour The former slides back and forth between a sort of goofy gumdrop playground full of light melodies and ultra-crisp beats that punch it up without getting in the way.

“Happy Sneakers” – Wisp

The latter moves with a more propulsive feel, layering together some dense analogue synth melodies that spiral into the stratosphere as the beat programming gets more and more intense. It’s a near-perfect five minute build of joy, with some fun little off-kilter vocal snippets thrown in to punctuate it in just the right places.

“Lords & Ladies” – Wisp

I’m still one of those people who can’t believe that his previous album didn’t get more attention, so here’s hoping that Wisp cracks through the collective consciousness a bit more in 2010. This 75 minutes is just another feather in his cap.

(buy We Miss You at Rephlex.com)

1. Dane Says:
   January 20th, 2010 at 11:21 pm

   He posted Happy Sneakers years ago, I remember me and a friend organised a “geek dance party” in which we danced around like crazy people to all kinds of IDM, videogame music and anything else that seemed too weird and geeky to fit in at a normal dance party… Happy Sneakers was one of the high lights… I don’t know how anyone could ever listen to that song without wanting to get up and dance around! It makes me so happy