Stadiums & Shrines

Dreams of Japan with Dustin Wong

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The Ryokan was fairly unassuming from the outside—a slate archway wrapped over a small garden, aged and dimly lit in comparison to the larger, flashier villas on each side. But it had come recommended: “the best views in all the land,” promised an elderly man. The phrase cycled through his head, growing louder and more perplexing as he toured the quaint one-story inn. Every window faced out onto another dwelling. He could find no view to complement what the man had said. Nonetheless, there was a warmth here and he welcomed it, as he was far from home now. He knew not what had brought him back to the town of his youth, but he trusted the tailwinds.

“This is fine, thank you.”

He entered the room and within seconds had dropped his bags in awe. Each wall was framed in perfect symmetry by paintings, which breathed richly into the natural light, infusing the air’s dust with a spectrum of color.

On the wall to his left, a rice field; the lavenders striking an odd iridescence with his every step. To his right, a snow-capped mountain range, so well defined he almost believed it to be coated in frost. And straight ahead, a pond bridged by stones, just like the ones he leapt across as a boy.

This was Japan as he remembered it, inviting him in. With little hesitation, he stepped onto the closest pebble, then to the next one, and then the next one…

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Dustin Wong is an accomplished dreamer, having applied his infinite guitar virtuosity to a handful of interpreted dreams (including one of my own) just a few months ago—a project which in part inspired this one. As did his latest LP, Dreams Say, Create, View, Shadow Leads, out now on Thrill Jockey.

Dreams of Chile with It is rain in my face.

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She had seen the Chilean coast before, though only in paintings, then dreams. She’d seen his face as well, it seemed, in fleeting glimpses or in the tides of a reverie. Now closer, inside an actual moment, from a chair on a terrace near the water’s edge, neither the coast nor his features were entirely true to form—better, in fact, to her delight.

The tables had been cleared. And one by one the guests were swaying themselves into dusk. Spectres of spirit animals trailed behind.

Diagonally from across the courtyard, clouded in his own smoky exhales, the man had seen her too. He wondered what spell made her so radiant—the night’s glow, the way it softened her in pastels; the ocean’s slow breath, how it conversed with her own.

By now the waiters had traded their trays for guitars, their ponchos laced with bells, their tip jars rattling, their dance one of courtship, the Cueca as they knew it. And by night’s end, the man would swap his seat with a hawk, she with a dove, and together they would fly over the long, narrow, enchanted nation.

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It is rain in my face. is Mat Jones. His self titled, debut full length arrives next week through DZ Tapes, and can be streamed now from the label’s bandcamp. We’ve been fortunate enough to present a few of Mat’s performances (the most recent on display today), both solo and as half of Pressed And, who will take the DMS stage this Saturday.

Dreams of Brazil with Headaches

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Generations of economy shifted like tectonic plates, framed in a panorama by his tower window. Automobiles pulsed through the veins of the raw metropolis below.

His notes shook, his script now an unconstrained freehand—the spikes of each crosshatch piercing the page just as the buildings pierced the sky.

Brasília was pouring out onto itself; a wilderness redefined; a city alive.

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Headaches is Landon Speers, who played a backyard with us a few weeks back and is about to head out on tour with Purity Ring (as previewed recently at LPR).

Dreams of Peru with Monster Rally

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The clouds seemed to twist like trails from the hills, mirroring the dozens that spilt up from the countryside, as if to outline a gateway to some sun-dialed utopia just off the map and out of reach. This higher ground hinted at was indeed sacred, and while it lay miles away, its presence could be felt in the heart of town, in the people—stitched into the songs they sang and fabrics they wore—its energy as heavy as the altitude itself.

In a row stood three men, porters by trade. Behind two of them, shadows.

“I could show you how those mountains got there,” came from the shadowless one.

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Monster Rally is Ted Feighan, who recently dived into his own collage work with us here.