Dustin Wong's solo work-- mostly instrumental, heavy on blankets of overlapping guitar loops-- is executed with a sense of glee and confusion that's akin to watching a small child endlessly wrapping toilet roll around themselves. Wong took a similar approach during his time with Baltimore art punks Ponytail, although that band had a greater sense of abandon than his more studied output on his own. Mediation of Ecstatic Energy is the latest LP in a rapid-fire set of releases that have come from him since the dissolution of his former band. It's the second record from him this year, following his collaboration with Takako Minekawa on Toropical Circle, and the third part in a trilogy of albums that includes Infinite Love (2010) and Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads (2012). The intent of the trilogy is somewhat muddy; it's billed as an adventure in "advanced solo guitar looping techniques," a description that could apply to most of the work Wong has released to date.
It's best not to think too hard on how all this hangs together with his prior recordings, as mostly it comes across as a natural extension of ideas Wong has carefully advanced on for many years. If there is an underlying theme, it's in the way he appears fascinated with pairing natural and unnatural sounds, matching winsome strumming with shards of robo-noise, all pulled out of the same instrument. Ponytail had a vast rhythmic sway that sucked audiences right into their sound, largely thanks to drummer Jeremy Hyman's incredible pounding. But here Wong retreats from that, sometimes setting his songs to a backing so stiff it's positively claustrophobic, further emphasizing the machine-like rigidity he takes to some of his guitar playing. It serves to heighten the lighter feel that blooms when he's free to wander in less densely layered material-- "Imaginelectric" is a bright burst of air after the dense "Emerald Atmosphere".
Something that's notable here and on Wong's other solo efforts is the sense of play involved, a feeling that his cross-stitched guitar lines are inducing a form of giddy mania. The intro to "Out of the Crown Head" is ridiculously labyrinthian, although it's thrilling to see him pull himself out of there, untying all the work he's done to build into some kind of alien approximation of a sea shanty. Robert Fripp comes to mind at times, although a more unlikely comparison is the glorious stop-start robotics of early Devo. It's there in the awkward, metallic edges of "Liberal Christian Youth Ministry", where every part is treated as a block of sound that precisely slots together. There are no smooth transitions in Wong's world, no natural bridges from verse to chorus. Instead, it's the guitar equivalent of watching a logjam on the freeway, with escape seeming ever more distant with every new element added to the mix.
Thought has clearly been put into the sequencing of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy. The formula roughly goes: guitars gradually amassing like a dust storm, moments of brittle tension, a soft release into breezy territory (repeat). Everything comes close to implosion on the centerpiece "(A) shows (B) his analysis and (C) looked over", with rhythms collapsing and Wong appearing to have forgotten where he is entirely at one point. This album could have used a few more moments like that-- times where chops are thrown out of the window and a more reckless approach settles in. Instead, Wong occasionally cross-references himself a little too closely, recycling ideas from "Emerald Atmospheres" on "Physical Consciousness Went In". Maybe that's his sense of play at work again. After all, an album about loops wouldn't be complete if it didn’t loop back on itself at some point.
