BLUE LAKE - Weft
Blue Lake’s new offering ‘Weft’ sees its creator Jason Dungan unearth new musical terrain with a mini-album which presents the projects evolution. Finding inspiration in the craft of weaving and embracing a collective spirit as a band leader, all while readying a new studio album expected later in 2025.
It follows the lauded album Sun Arcs (2023) with Pitchfork naming it (Best New Music, 8.3), amongst numerous other accolades. Blue Lake is the ongoing musical project of American born, Copenhagen based musician Jason Dungan which serves as his artistic platform as composer and collaborator. Developed over the period of 2024 and witnessed at live performances across a swath of European cosmopolitan cities and festivals, the project stands at a new creative juncture. The earthy title track ‘Weft’ emerges with a sense of ease and familiarity as looping guitar riffs in open tunings bed in around a warm cello pulse that provides the essential heartbeat. These interlinking parts align to create his most explicit version yet of an American writing country music in Scandinavia. Dungan named the release ‘Weft’ as a reference to the weaving practice of his partner, Danish visual artist Maria Zahle, whose work “Torso” is featured on the album’s cover. With her works providing a constant source of inspiration to his music and practice as an instrument-builder, Dungan found a symbiotic connection between their mediums, which is reflected in the music on ‘Weft’.
“There’s a not so subtle visual relation between the masses of strings on the instrument and the masses of thread on a loom. Weaving allows you to have an intimate relationship between the many individual parts of a piece, as well as the finished whole, and I think for me that watching her process on the loom for many years has deeply impacted the ways in which I think about music.”
A unique element to the overall sound was an acute focus on first-takes and favouring instruments seldom used in previous recordings: piano, melodica, 12-string guitar. Three out of five tracks were fully or mainly recorded live, with the exception of ‘The Forest’ (originating in Andersabo, Sweden) with the rest recorded at his home studio in Copenhagen, during Winter 2023/24. Layered acoustic guitars slowly build and shape-shift, met with zither, piano, flute and clarinet flourishes. Even the faintly audible sound of Dungan’s own breathing all combines to form an endlessly morphing tapestry of shapes, forms, and colours with endless depth. Three key components form the tangible makeup of ‘Weft’ as Dungan reasserts his skills as a “songwriter”, whilst further developing his “live” practice, interplayed with the “studio” acting as a compositional space to investigate, re-shape and find final form. As we arrive at ‘Oceans’, a folk counterpart to the opener ‘Weft’ Dungan floods the listener with his own form of storytelling, but again, one told without words. Built from a single nylon guitar, some wisps of extra guitar and plucked cello bass – a narrative evolves triggering personal associations with a vast expanse. A reminder of the human strands ever present at the core of his writing.
Dungan welcomes the Blue Lake band to the studio on ‘Tatara’, named after a Volcano in the Andes mountain range which became the life’s work of his geologist father. Written and developed in rehearsals for an array of upcoming live concerts; it features Carolyn Goodwin (bass clarinet), Tomo Jacobson (double bass), and Pauline Hogstrand (viola). The recorded version ended up being the very first take with the band seeking to capture an immediacy in their performance. Gathering found objects collected in the farmhouse in Sweden: metal, driftwood, a bicycle tire, Jason then added experimental percussive elements including his own handmade carved log drum, resulting in a firelit breakout that could depict a lone figure aware of the landscape’s indifference. ‘Strata’ closes the sequence with a beguiling live solo recording on a new 36-string zither, designed by Dungan and hand built by a local luthier. Its louder, richer and deeper tones ring out in abundance.
‘Weft’ is a collection of new works that casts a net into new sound territories with distinctive timbres yet always channelled through the refined lens of Dungan’s prism. Infused with an ongoing connection to nature, it furthermore expands his unique meld of off-kilter folk, jazz, country and left-field experimental ambience. ‘Weft’ then is an accomplishment of growth, of bolder objectives and of collaboration with like minds. The Blue Lake project takes a dynamic step forward venturing into new creative spaces while leaving some clues along the way.
“Performing live, with the band and solo, was really opening up my thinking to ways in which the music could grow and develop, and make use of the dynamics of live performance.”
