Pitchfork

Perhaps because they've had us on a first-name since the beginning, Windy & Carl have always seemed grounded and unpretentious. Their music contains a certain amount of mystery, with drones hinting at a shadowy world even as the placid surface drifted toward new age, but the makers always struck me as approachable. It's a quality best illustrated by the amiable intimacy of the Windy-penned liner notes on Introspection, the late 2002 singles and rarities box that ushered in a period of semi-retirement.

Early in 2005 Windy & Carl were persuaded by a friend to release a handmade CD-R to launch the small-run Brainwashed Handmade label. Their inspiration for the new project was the recent death of Flea, the dog they had cared for together for 14 years. This release pairs a reissue of Dedications to a Flea with a second album of new material called Dream House. Flea is pictured on the record sleeve and Windy tells the dog's story with a staggering amount of detail on the booklet inside. A thousand-word essay about a beloved pet is a strange gesture for an album's liner notes, sure, but coming from these two it seems a little less unusual.

Text aside, the music is a welcome return to form. Windy & Carl will probably never reach the focus achieved on their masterpiece, 1998's Depths, but these two albums show they're still able to build an effective atmosphere. This is long-form Windy & Carl with textural skill intact; four tracks stretch across two CDs and none of them seems in any particular hurry. "Ode to a Dog" has the peaceful, cloud-drift ambience that filled Consciousness, with Windy's repeating bass pulse framing Carl's sheets of sheer, light-catching feedback. "Sketch for Flea" pairs a "field recording" of Flea on a walk-- complete with pants and the sound of rain on the sidewalk-- with a more ominous rumble of guitar hum. The latter track is particularly striking, with the thrashings of the departed dog lending an unpredictable air to the patiently unfolding drone.

The Dream House opens with "The Eternal Struggle", which I believe is, at 32 minutes, the longest track Windy & Carl have released. There is more here than merely keeping the drone going for twice as long as usual, though; in fact "The Eternal Struggle" seems quite composed relative to W&C's typical Eno-esque "horizontal" method. Though changes happen slowly the structure suggests symphonic movements, with the long opening organ drone serving as the tonal center toward which other instruments gravitate, and surges of noise dominate the last few minutes. "I Have Been Waiting to Hear Your Voice" closes the set with a Fripp-inspired lead carving a melody from an icy extended chord.

The stated inspiration for The Dream House is LaMonte Young's installation of the same name, but Windy & Carl's world is so much more human and imperfect. The eternal magnificence of physics informs the work of the old master but Windy & Carl's steady-state pieces never lose touch with the limitations of the organic, the most significant of which being the thing that took Flea from them.