Somewhere between ambient, soundtrack, and an audio play. The tragicomedy and melancholy of a halted art project and a restless mind turning in on itself; as daydreams, farce, and the surreal transform into a blue and beautiful narrative.

“In January, 2018, I travelled to Lithuania. I was staying in a small wooden cabin in the middle of a forest and was there to photograph all 3000 sculptures in the nearby Devil Museum. Over four weeks in Lithuania I kept an audio diary and recorded sounds in and around my cabin. I met no one and spoke about meeting no one. I remembered Crow Man and the time I sold my mum a kilo of scallops. I listened to the door hinge and I recorded the river, with its small islands of ice brushing up against the banks like a pulse. It’s a nice word, ‘pulse’; the motion of an artery as blood is driven through it by the heart.”

The Devil Museum is an audio drama made up from these recordings. It’s scored with original compositions by Kareem Lotfy and was put together and mixed in collaboration with Jacob Oostra.

“Dwyer’s debut recording ‘The Devil Museum’ introduces an observant spirit at work, turning his surroundings and daily life into an instrument and narrative. […]
the artist’s own definition of the work as “audio drama” means Dwyer’s witterings are best taken with a pinch of salt. To be fair it sounds like he had a nice time out there, contrasting with, say, the manic results of a similar experiment in a Scottish caravan by Sockethead, or the crankier domestic poetics of Graham Lambkin/Mark Harwood/Louis Johnstone, with Dwyer tending more to local poetry night style of melodic cadence and daydreamy nice nice, not warts and all.

Gelled with Kareem Lotfy’s sparing original compositions, and benefiting from mixing rendered by Jacob Rostra, ‘The Devil Museum’ is a subtle and odd album that feels like an experimental NTS show that bypassed radio and went straight to disc.”
(Boomkat review)

 

As a companion, I suggest you have a look at Notes on Devils, a beautifully printed transcription.

An excerpt from the record can be listened to here: https://jacobdwyer.com/The-Devil-Museum