City of Dawn 'Silent Portrait' [CD]

4-Panel Digipak CD
Glass-mastered, silkscreen printed CD housed in a 4-panel, 300g satin cardstock Digipak. Clear cd tray. Includes download code insert. Shrinkwrapped. Pressed, manufactured, and assembled in Ontario, Canada. Edition of 150.

For more than a decade, City of Dawn (aka Damien Duque) has graced us with a prolific run of experimental ambient that combines guitar with a broad range of other instruments and textures to craft consistently stunning sonic worlds.  His work is guided by the enigmas of existence found not only in nature, but in the workings of the brain and body; many pieces are intended to heal through repetition with subtle variation, while others are driven by improvisation, biofeedback, and happenstance.

On Silent Portrait, Duque presents us with two extended, immersive compositions that balance rapturous intensity with placid delicacy, flowing all the while like ocean currents.  “This collection is shaped by the ways my mind processes both noise and silence,” he explains, “and guided by a philosophy of existential, deep listening, I hope it will invite the listener into an unhurried space where loud and quiet can hold equal weight.”  Drawn from a deep well of emotional inquiry, these compositions beautifully demonstrate the powerful effects that music and other vibrations can have on our overall well-being.

The first side, “Muted Colors Collide With Silent Screams”, begins on a bed of analog hiss and echoing tones that alternate between harmony and dissonance, conjuring images of tree shadows in heavy wind: fluid, fleeting, and transcendent.  Lilting strings fill the stereo field in spacious orchestrations as the piece moves into its second movement, where deep bass appears through soft distortions and a cavernous, reverberating piano line darkens the edges.  Here, we might be in the dusty corridor of an abandoned building, where shafts of light glow through cracked windows in a confluence of memory and mystery.

Duque masterfully guides us through his mind with instinctive evolutions, possessed by an adventuresome curiosity, always wanting to see around the next corner and behind each door.  In its final minutes, “Muted Colors” builds to a dazzling, slow-motion swell before receding into mist and rumble, blanketed by twinkling guitars.  The piece grew from a collaborative improvisation with long-time friend Marisa Grijalva in late 2024 that “felt simple and sincere, which was a feeling I wanted to keep,” he notes, “so I gradually composed around that core with all the layers of guitar drones, keyboards, and other textures that formed the final version.”

The second side, “Yet Garden’s Silence is Made of Sounds”, rises swiftly into a mammoth, dynamic drone that threatens to shred the speakers at its peak.  Duque relents for a few breaths before teasing another rush, and another, mimicking the unpredictable whims of hurricane-force weather.  Throughout its middle section, a white-noise hiss emerges as waves of shimmering, harmonic drone and deep-underground bass perform a remarkable balancing act. The final minutes of Silent Portrait revisit the stately strings of its beginning, creating a beautiful sense of natural cycles and symmetry; as it fades to a final stretch of choral vocals shrouded in cracking haze, the effect is sacred and eternal, as if pulled straight from the sky by deft hands.

Duque, an avowed advocate for the Autism community, elaborates, “My intention isn't to create something that simply soothes, but to build an environment that mirrors the depth and complexity of feeling, a space for introspection, presence, and the weight of being.  Longform composition allows a different level of depth and nuance for the listener, and for me as a creator, so it was a joy to apply that approach to what began as a happy, inspired experiment, and let it intuitively grow into something so much bigger.”

Written, recorded, and produced by City of Dawn. Bass and additional sound textures on 'Muted Colors Collide with Silent Screams' by Marisa Grijalva. Mastered at Ambient Mountain House by James Bernard. Cover design by Damien Duque. Layout and design by zakè.