13 Holy Nights. The World of Dust

Two things are certain when a record is released by The World of Dust. 1) The label, Tiny Room Records. 2) Involvement of label owner Stefan Breuer. The rest is totally unpredictable. The music can be written by someone else or in collaboration. The same seems to go for who collaborates, although some family members are always on the records.

Enter 13 Holy Nights, the first The World of Dust record on this blog since 2022s 'Gaman'. This album is all Stefan Breuer. Inspired by his dreams around the summer solstice of 2022, he wrote a set of thirteen songs, one for each of the holy nights from 24 December to 6 January. He released one song per day on Instagram during these days in the last winter, that are now combined on the album 13 Holy Nights.

Anyone listening to the album will notice the absence of guitars, unless some of the effects disguise it. This is an electronic album, filled with atmospheric sounds and soundscapes under the relaxed way Stefan Breuer sings his songs. There are definitely melodies in there but all built from electronic sounds and part of soundscapes.

Reading the bio, the absence of guitars is confirmed. Breuer worked mostly with an Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler synthesizer and recorded with a Tascam 388 recorder, a device he started to record his first forays into music with as a ten year old. Back to the past in the present. It all sounds like very lo-fi and yes, it is somewhere in between 1990s lo-fi and 2020s home recordings. 13 Holy Nights has something of that primitiveness, were it not that all the electronics disguise it pretty well.

One of the things that makes 13 Holy Nights attractive to listen to, is listening to all the diverse sounds, as there are so many. Breuer worked on the compositions but also successfully has been in search of different sounds coming out of the Ensoniq. There is so much to discover on this album. 

The album is a mix of songs with lyrics and instrumentals, like for example 'Trunajaya'. It doesn't happen but somehow I have an inner ear reminding me constantly of the moment Emerson, Lake & Palmer burst into 'Peter Gunn'. It is as if 'Trunajaya' could do this as well. A big thump on a drum and go. The suggestion certainly makes the song more exiting. The instrumental '12 Grapes' has the excitement all by itself.

13 Holy Nights mostly is a contemplative album. On average the songs are in a slower tempo and give space for thought. For the average Dutchmen, like myself, the Festive Season has become just that, running from one form of party to another, without a thought to the origins of the Christian holiday. The World of Dust delivers its own contribution to the Festive Season and the music gives pause to it. 13 Holy Nights as an album works on a few levels I notice and is very much worth while listening to.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order 13 Holy Nights here:

https://tinyroomrecords.bandcamp.com/album/13-holy-nights