Constellations: A History of Duster
Duster has been one of my favourite bands for quite a while now but only recently have I started to dig into Duster pre-history and it's fascinating to hear the development of Clay Parton and Dove Amber as they transitioned from the screamy hardcore of Mohinder to Duster's crawling riffage to the post-Duster projects Clay, Dove and Jason Albertini would develop later on. I’m going to attempt to outline the bands history as best I can from the resources available. There is very little interview material to draw from so a lot of my research was discography-based and connecting dots from there but when I’ve uncovered interesting tidbits I’ve included those.
In the mid-90s Clay and Dove were in the hardcore band Mohinder. There isn't much that points the way to Duster in that music but if you listen to the Transient Sequences EP you can pick out some musical traits:
One little piece of Mohinder would reappear later on in the Duster story; the song The Static Cult would provide the name of Clay Parton's label begun in 2000 to release Duster's Contemporary Movement:
Also in Mohinder was Marc Bianchi and after the dissolution of Mohinder he, Clay and Dove would combine to form Calm. Now you can really start to hear identifiable Duster qualities. This is a great lost piece of 90s alternative rock:
Those fleeting glimpses of what Duster would eventually become are fleshed out on the Moonraker 7", especially on Scientists & Saboteurs:
Calm didn't last. Marc Bianchi left to do other things and so Clay and Dove began working on what evolved into Duster. Their first releases were the Christmas Dust EP…
and On The Dodge tapes. It seems that Duster was pretty much a fully realized concept from the beginning:
Then we get Stratosphere and beginning with the 1975 EP Jason Albertini joins the band, playing drums and contributing ideas and occasionally songs like Unrecovery from Contemporary Movement:
In 1997 Albertini had moved in with Clay Parton and Dove Amber. At the very beginning of his involvement with them and before he started Helvetia he made music under the name Tardis. Fortunately for fans Jason made those recordings available on his Bandcamp page (killer early version of Unrecovery here):
On the Bandcamp page for that release Jason mentions that he was going out to the desert every few weeks to jam with a primordial Queens Of The Stone Age. Josh Homme had this recollection of that period:
Josh Homme: "There was a kid named Jason Albertini who I just called The Kid. He had to talk to his mum to let him rehearse. He was a virtuoso. But he didn’t talk, he just ate rice and jogged. So he was weird."
At the same time that Duster were making these records they also made music under the name Valium Aggelein. Slower and spacier than Duster and also instrumental:
In 2000 Clay Parton started the Static Cult label. The first two releases after Contemporary Movement were The Clever North Wind by Jason Albertini's new band Helvetia:
And Clay's solo project EIAFUAWN's album Birds In The Ground:
Clay continued to release music on Static Cult until around 2012. The most active Duster member was Jason Albertini who, when he wasn't doing stints on bass in Built To Spill was releasing incredible albums as Helvetia:
During this Duster hiatus while Jason Albertini was keeping busy with Helvetia and Built To Spill Clay Parton was quietly operating his The Static Cult label but in 2015 he did this one-off cassette release with Yonathan Kifle on Pillowscars:
And that was kind of the last we heard of Clay and Dove until in 2017 this live Helvetia recording appeared that featured a spate of Duster songs with Dove Amber:
Finally in 2018 we started to hear rumblings of activity and in 2019 the compilation Capsule Losing Contact came out on Numero Group followed by a new album of new material. There were shows and we all hoped another release would follow:
And in the meantime Jason Albertini kept pumping out great stuff as Helvetia:
In 2022 a new album, Together appeared. It was sadly first Duster album without any involvement from Jason Albertini who had been dealing with some health issues. I can’t say if this is the reason he didn’t participate on Together but we’re left to connect what dots we have:
As of this writing Duster keeps touring without Jason. But Clay and Dove remain active and as a fan that’s all I could ever want but I do really hope Jason is well enough to return one day.
Duster is on Instagram and Twitter and they also have a website if you want to keep up with band news. Jason Albertini is on Instagram but has been updating his Bandcamp page frequently of late.
This was originally a Twitter thread that I’ve been occasionally updating. For Substack I’ve included all of the new stuff into the chronology of the band’s history. The original thread is here: https://twitter.com/purelava/status/1392658030840401921