Dummy (EP)

There’s nothing stupid about the music of Los Angeles quintet Dummy, though it might leave a listener a little stupefied. The band makes no bones about what they’re building, splitting the difference between the sweet, steady analog pulse of Cluster and Harmonia, and The Velvet Underground’s warm, welcoming wall of jangling guitars. 

It’s a formula that’s familiar enough. In fact, “Slacker Mask” could pass for a Stereolab outtake, at least until it erupts into a squall of distortion in its final lap. The extended closing track “Touch the Chimes”, meanwhile, is unadulterated kosmische content.

Thing is, Dummy wasn’t born out of a gritty basement bar in West Berlin, nor some bat-cave of a loft in New York City. These are coastal California kids, and the longstanding local tradition of hazy, sun-dappled psych-pop carries through into these pieces, imbuing them with charm and colour uncommon among the efforts of their contemporaries.