Death of the Sun is a fairly ambitious project, but for a band who's been playing together for thirteen years, it may not be so daunting. With new(ish) members violinist Jonathan LaMaster (head of Sublingual Records) and DJ Jake Trussell, the six-piece set out to make an album that would truly and properly integrate digital sampling into a rock context, an aspiration that Robin Amos correctly mentions in the liner notes as one that many bands have been pretty unsuccessful in during the past decade. And though I might question whether or not the context of Cul de Sac's music can be definitively called rock, Death of the Sun meets the band's aims with favorable results. Each track began with a sample (found or created) supplied by Amos, former member Michael Bloom, guitarist Glenn Jones, or drummer Jon Proudman. Amos and Trussell then set out to alter these samples in order to create the backbone of each track, upon which the rest of the group constructed their parts. "Dust of Butterflies" samples a 1933 78-rpm record called "Creole Love Call" to create a dreamy, tropical undulation, nicked by electronic glitches and set afloat on LaMaster's sonorous violin. "Bamboo Rockets" samples Peruvian field recordings, but more prominently features Jones on electric sitar, which eerily dances over the deep, dark sounds of the sampled rain forest audio and Proudman's drums. "Turok, Son of Stone" samples and loops tribal-inspired drumming from Proudman, upon which unearthly moans and hisses flitter and decompose. "Bellevue Bridge," featuring recordings made on the aforementioned structure in Jones' childhood hometown in Nebraska, is Death of the Sun's only real plunge into Americana, with Jones' guitar echoing John Fahey and blugrass fingerpicking while cars pass in the distance and the rest of the group create an expansive and dramatic backing score. "Death of the Sun" samples multiple sources, both ethnic music and an outdoor wind sculpture, and is Cul de Sac's least successful attempt, too heavy on the electronics, it lacks the subtle touch that integrated the other samples so well into the other tracks. The main strength of the album is Amos and Trussell's ability to integrate the samples in a way that makes them sound organic and integral to the song. "Death of the Sun" sounds more like a DJ's remix of Cul De Sac's music. "I Remember Nothing More" closes the album with the sampling of a minute-long Creole vocal mourning taken from a scratchy 78-rpm record. The vocals provide a base for the music, both emotionally and structurally, upon which Jones, LaMaster, and Proudman lay evocative, slow-tempo rock. Overall, Death of the Sun is a success, and though a few tracks may linger too long, or the normally well-crafted manipulation of the samples loses its flair from time to time, Cul De Sac have managed to do better at using these samples and integrating them into their work than many, many musicians who have tried before them.
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