The Dead Tongues and Kevin Rumley release new albums

Listen to The Dead Tongues’ complementary records Body of Light and I Am A Cloud, and one can’t help but be amazed at the diverse range of styles group mastermind Ryan Gustafson has united on a single collection.

Following the more traditional indie rock Body of Light’s drop in June, the connected works were released as a double album on Aug. 9. The 16 tracks present a bold creative statement — albeit one that feels wholly natural to its creator.

“I’m not sure what gives me the confidence [to craft such a diverse collection], other than just needing to explore those spaces,” says Gustafson, who’s lived in the Asheville area since 2013. “To me, there’s not that big of a difference between the more improvisational or meditative pieces and the songs. A lot of the lyrics are touching on the same stuff.”

Helping encourage that sonic freedom while adhering to the work’s central themes is the song “I’m a Cloud Now.” The rousing, seven-plus-minute jam was the first piece the multi-instrumentalist/vocalist wrote for the second album and wound up being the jumping-off point for I Am A Cloud’s other tracks.

“It also just made sense, conceptually, that it would be this morphing, changing thing,” Gustafson says. “After this long song that ends with me saying ‘I’m a cloud now,’ I thought of it as different cloud formations passing by. They can never quite stay the same — they’re just different iterations of the same material.”

On the other end of the spectrum is the lovely and oddly meditative penultimate track “Letters of Returning,” an extended spoken-word piece full of rich imagery, laid over increasingly complex yet soothing instrumentation. The work of artists such as the ambient group Stars of the Lid, percussionist/producer Carlos Muñoz and saxophonist/spoken-word artist Alabaster dePlume have furthered his interest in experimental sounds.

“Things that blur the lines between compositions and improvisational things,” Gustafson says. “Along with lots of poetry of the likes of anything from Gwendolyn Brooks to Frank Stanford — all of that stuff through the filter of the songwriting that I’ve been growing.”

To prep for Body of Light and I Am A Cloud, Gustafson hunkered down at “the Shack,” his workshop in the far reaches of Buncombe County, for a month of what he calls “preproduction.” He feels that this time of demoing and writing is important for his process and gives him time to explore what he thinks “the guts of the thing are” and the common threads between the songs.

“I can get as far into them on my own as I want, structure-wise or idea-wise. And that way, when I go to a studio afterwards, I really know where I’m at with the project,” Gustafson says.

“Then I can guide the thing, hopefully from a place of really knowing what I’m trying to do. And it actually becomes a lot more freeing at that point, because I can set things up in a way that I can let it go rather than trying to hang on too tight. It gives me time to go through my process of being crazy with it, and then I can be real free with it with other people.”

Such was the case when he went to Betty’s, Sylvan Esso’s Durham-based studio, to collaborate with Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak; Bon Iver), Mat Davidson (Twain), Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats), Joe Westerlund (Califone; Megafaun), plus fellow Asheville-based artists Maddie Shuler (Indigo De Souza), Ryan Oslance (Ahleuchatistas) and former longtime local Michael Libramento (Floating Action; Bonny Light Horseman).

Dipping into his vast collection of modified cassette tapes that play 3-second loops, Gustafson used the repeated grooves as baselines for the ensemble to go in whatever direction they desired — encouraging them to “hear what’s happening and just respond.”

“It was on the more extreme side of open-ended for these sessions,” he says. “And then I sat with the material after and tinkered with some things here and there. But for the most part, I was just riding off of what we had done in those moments.”

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The basement tapes

Speak the name “Kevin Rumley,” and images come to mind of the long-haired, gifted drummer sitting behind a kit for such Asheville-area acts as Tyler Ramsey, Jeremy Boger, Joshua Carpenter, Electric Owls, Bandazian and Ivy Eld.

Now it’s time to also add visuals of him singing while lush, layered instrumentation surrounds his concise poetic lyrics.

The longtime fixture of the local music scene displays this newfound prowess on his debut solo EP VI which, as its Roman numeral title suggests, features six tracks — all featuring layered vocals and bright sonic landscapes. Though the collection clocks in at a mere 18 minutes, the good vibes linger long after the final track, “For Clifford,” ends.

Rumley began his journey as a solo artist in 2022, when his friend Adam McDaniel, producer and engineer at West Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios, gifted him a mini-Mellotron.

“I went home and was like, ‘Oh man! This has every instrument,’” Rumley says. “My skills are limited when it comes to everything but drums. With this Mellotron, I can kind of fake it and stack it — just like Billy Corgan.”

While Rumley is a big fan of the Smashing Pumpkins frontman’s penchant for guitar stacking, he cites Phosphorescent as a huge inspiration in his audio approach, particularly the singer-songwriter’s use of vocoder. Also lighting his creative fire is Nightlands, the side project of The War on Drugs bassist and fellow Asheville resident Dave Hartley, with whom Rumley collaborated on an upcoming single.

But simply getting to create and play music is something Rumley doesn’t take for granted. After playing in bands since middle school, he was serving in the U.S. Marines on the Iraq-Syria border in 2004 when he was injured by an improvised explosive device (IED). Rumley underwent 32 surgeries over 18 months at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland and was told he would never walk again. Though he regained mobility in 2005, chronic physical pain resulted in an opioid and heroin addiction.

Sober since 2010, Rumley is the program director for the Buncombe County Veterans Treatment Court, a two-year program for veterans facing felony charges. And as he’s gradually gotten back into regular drumming, escaping into music has become key to his ongoing healing.

“Every day, if not every week, I’m recording something in my basement,” Rumley says. “Because of my physical disabilities from being injured in the war, I don’t skateboard anymore. And so to do things for my health, I just go to the basement. It’s a safe space.”

These sessions have produced over 300 songs — though Rumley says he uses the term “song” loosely and thinks of his creations more as “feelings or landscapes.”

“It’s just an evening putting together a melody that I hear, and then I’ll throw around drums,” he says. “My process is just a reflection of truly whatever that day was, so it’s not always the most profound, deep intellectual exploration. But if a song lingers in my psyche for longer than just an evening, then there’s usually something to that.”

Helping Rumley achieve that desired end result is a process he calls “Muppets,” in which he takes a vocal line and sings it in a falsetto reminiscent of a Jim Henson creation.

“If you stack 10 of those, then it starts to take shape and become almost this children’s choir,” he says. “I do a main vocal, and then tucked underneath would be this children’s choir, which gives it that kind of Phosphorescent effect. It’s wild — you’re sort of painting a picture with just a few phrases here and there.”

Layer in additional vocals from Julie Odell and instrumental contributions from David Messina and the Mellotron-gifter himself, McDaniel, and the sonic landscapes on VI were fleshed out in increasingly creative ways.

As for selecting a release date, Rumley didn’t set out to have it coincide with the 20-year anniversary of his IED injury and 14 years from the date of beginning his recovery. But as he was finalizing the mixes in March, he realized that if he hustled, he could have everything ready by that doubly meaningful April 7 date.

“The experience of being blown up shaped these songs, and together I was like, ‘Oh sh*t! Every one of these ties back to themes of loss and love and end of life and healing,” Rumley says. “So it was fitting that I finished these and was able to release it on that day.”

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