ANN CHASE - A CHANT F0R Y0UR PLANTS (1976)

To ring in the New Year, here are four albums celebrating growth and renewal: music for and-- in the last case--from plantlife. This one comes from the enigmatic Ann Chase, who wrote the chant in question, as well as produced the project. This is an adaptation of Satie's Trois Gymnopedies, set to flute, guitar, and narration.

An attempt at a dreamtrack for house plants.

M0RT GARS0N - M0THER EARTH'S PLANT4S1A (1976)

The original release of this new age masterwork in the music-for-plants genre included a booklet on plant care and nourishment. I'd love to see the research on the successes or failures of music as it relates to plant growth, but this album has me believing. Much like D. Teie's groundbreaking music for cats (although I would think with far less research, and certainly far less evidence--check out the vids), this album takes up the question of human music for non-humans, a dream of sorts in itself.

Tendrils and rhizomes....

J0ËL FAJERM4N - LA AVENTURA DE LAS PLANTAS (1982)

A garage sale find from the mid 90s--a Spanish CD reissue of the original French titled release. This is a leftfield electro soundtrack for a TV series on fauna, a solo production by this composer and keyboard/synth player. Filled with what sound like sonic nods to his fellow countryman, Jarre, the Younger. Only more--you may have guessed it--organic somehow.

Not sure what plants would think about this, but it may help you dream about them.

S0UNDS OF THE TR0P1CAL RAINF0REST (1989)

Best to end the post with the ecosystem speaking for itself, another nature recording on repeat at OWOD. "Gentle Persuasion" according to the cover. Indeed. No info on field recording artist.
From CD.

Dream...

J0HN Z0RN - A DRE4MERS CHR1STMAS (2011)

All I want for Christmas is an album of atheist Christmas songs--a new paradoxical genre. For now, of course, there's this... Kinda wish Zorn had put this album in his Radical Jewish Culture series for similar reasons.

Dream the holidays away....

D10N MCGREG0R - DREAMS AG41N (1999)

Confounding recordings of McGregor narrating his dreams out loud in his sleep. Frightening and fascinating. Overheard sleep-talking by his roommate in the early 60s, McGregor allowed his friend to tape many of his sleeps over a few years. The earliest--and tamest--were released by Decca in 1964. These recordings here include bawdy ramblings and outright nightmares...ones that wake him up screaming. An essential research document of the dreaming process in action. Also, a vital lesson in story-telling. Here an entire narrative develops through a kind of dramatic dialogue where only one side of a two-sided conversation is actually delivered. Simply amazing.

Dream again...

0PAL - HAPPY N1GHTM4RE, BABY (1987)

The only release by this pre-Mazzy Star project. Sleepy, lulling psych rock with occasional flourishes of glam-rock swagger. The subjects of dreams and nightmares here are mainly lyric based, although the swirling slow-groove acidity of some of the tracks are not without their potential to induce rapid eye movement sleep and fall in step with some of our circadian rhythms.

Lest it be said that we at OWOD de-emphasize the rightful place of rock in meditation, rest, somnolence or deep dreaming itself.

WANG CHUN6 - T0 L1VE AND DIE 1N LA (1985)

First of three 1985 releases: a personal project today. An aural testament of the dreams of youth and influence. And the glaring dream of Los Angeles at sunrise, the sound it makes through cinema speakers.

Close your eyes...

M4LC0LM G0LDSTEIN - VISI0N S0UND1NG (1985)

A work of not-quite-but-close droneish violin improv on one side of this self-released album. Great. On the flip, Goldstein provides an extended technique exercise in the form of playing an actual maple tree branch. Exquisite. His tapping, and scraping explorations of the sonic potential of a stick is enthralling, beyond meditative, if ridiculous. To this he adds subtle humming--again, almost a drone. A shamanistic experiment in already experimental sound.

The violin dreams of its youth as a tree...

VA - TERRA INC0GN1TA (1985)

A life changing record for me when this came out, copy purchased on school band trip to Portland, OR. From the defunct Auxilio de Cientos imprimatur. Synthpop, soundscape, dark wave, ambient ... with a few well-known contributors, and a number of less-known figures: Zazou, Muslimgauze, Diseno Corbusier, Bene Gesserit..... even a track with lyrics credited to one Nicolas Bourriaud (could it be the same one who wrote The Radicant?). An album whose content then was pure dreamscape--indeed escape-scape--and whose form now represents the lure of nostalgia, another time, a dreamstate incognito of its own.

0NN4-K0D0M0 - SYUUKA (1997)

Japanese ambient folk music from Charnel, the San Fran label that brought us many of the great noise and avant acts from the east. This one is a disquieting, yet angelic offering: fragile, yet foreboding. The first of two overtly ethereal albums I am spinning today. Clearly, I'm in the mood for daydreaming.

MAJA SK R4TKJE - CREPUSCUL4R H0UR (2016)

The audio component of a larger multimedia issue. A bold "triple-band" approach to ethereal vespers music: three choirs, three noise-music duos, all of them supported by requisite pipe organ. It's a dramatic listen, with a sprawling dramatis personae.  Although sounding like some kind of religious canto, the music is indeed a material, secular celebration of natural phenomena--crepuscular sun.

Praise the rays....

CHR1ST1NA KUB1SCH / F4BR1ZIO PLES51 - TEMP0 L1QUID0 (1979)

And today in the mail... another installment of DIVerso fetishism, our fourth. A flirtatious meeting of Italian minimalism and deutsch kunsthalle sound art: a fluxus tinged techno-kosmische. Here the lucid dream state meets cyclical, crunchy, recurring thoughts--a sonic enactment of the kind of churning brain syndrome that can strike the insomniac..turning in bed, almost asleep, when those thoughts begin to run in circles. One of my favorites of the series.

Neither sleeping nor awake, neither dreaming nor conscious...but all of them.

K4TE BU5H - THE DRE4M1NG (1982)

And, of course, this. A benchmark.

The dreamer, the dreaming, dreaming...

BR1TTA L1NDELL - WA1TING F0R THE NEXT SUNR1SE (1981)

At times this seems like kind of an avant yé-yé; other times this seems like a calm medieval pavan. Often, a poppy Berlin-style cabaret shines through. But this gem is indeed from Sweden. And who can really ever know what goes on in the minds of Swedes. Rich, mysterious melodies and lilting structures. Jarring components. Great lyrics. Lindell plays all parts herself, and uses several of her own self-built instruments. Plenty to ingest here; plenty with which to fall in love. 


Ponderous...Øresund

P4UL M0T1AN - L0ST IN A DRE4M (2010)

A small room. A chair before the window. It was time for music that promised reverie. Reverie arrived, waned, then arrived again.

Try it yourself....

R3MK0 SCHA - MACH1NE GU1T4RS (1982)

It was time for the non-human music of more automatons. And so automatons it was: an installation of suspended guitars, playing themselves.

The machines didn't care if we dreamed about them or not or not.

J0DY HARR1S / R0BERT QU1NE - ESCAPE (1981)

The title exudes associations about how The Society of the Spectacle got it wrong. And of course Adolf Loos, decades earlier. Decoration can--and should be--vital. Escapism, necessary. I concede it's a fine line. Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy should, if I was being consistent, show up for investigation on these pages devoted to sound, music, slumber and dreams. Perhaps it will. We all need at times to turn away, turn inward, surrender to passivity. Other times, escapism can fuel or refuel, affect and embolden. At the least restore the drive to fight another day, rock n, roll. (To resist, or at least practice No Way-v.)

Throw that knife...

P4TRIZ10 F4R1SELLI - ANTR0POF4G1A (1977)

A band-mate of Tofani in Area. And the third of our DIVerso offerings. I'm loving the series. I love collections. The scrambling, chaotic solo works on this album do not overtly suggest the anthropophagia invoked by the title: I am not sure what culture is being cannibalized here, let alone digested and excreted. It would seem genre, or perhaps sound itself, may be the victim. Nonetheless, if you are like me--someone who can only produce delta waves from generally unfamiliar sounds (and someone who is fascinated with Italy '77)--you will find in this album a beautiful source of sonic estrangement.

Serial dreamer...

JUL1US E4STMAN - UNJUST M4LA1SE (2005)

The power of Eastman's compositions--and performances--belie the palpable fragility that lingers within them. And the authority of his best works ("Evil Nigger" and "Gay Guerilla") give little sense of the composer's tragic life. These works are from 1973 to c. 1980, a time in which he met and collaborated with folks like Feldman, Oliveros, Arthur Russell...and famously pissed off Cage. For my money, Stacy Hardy's article on him is essential reading on the subject of composition. Look it up. Eastman's work holds the dream of an embodied art, a somatic art, an art that not only breaths but gasps, shouts, resists, counters.

Dream it...

M4RINA SAB1NA - MUSHR00M CEREM0NY OF THE MAZ4TEC IND1ANS OF MEX1C0 (1957)

A Folkways ethnomusicological field recording purportedly documenting a psilocybin ritual in Oaxaca. Sabina, the shaman, directs proceedings. I wish I knew more about the details of the ceremony itself--what it celebrates, investigates or heals--but instead I simply allow my colonial ears to enjoy the repetitive, lulling chants, invocations, humming, snippets of conversation and background sounds of this ceremony. I suspect this ritual is much like ours, about getting baked, listening to music and attempting to have intercourse with the divine.

Dreaming is a ritual performance...

ABD0U EL 0M4RI - NU1TS D' ÉTÉ (1976)

Moroccan keyboard Chaabi music, a kind of modern pop/traditional folk hybrid that El Omari takes to intoxicating heights. A distinct sound among the other veins of electronic experimentation within the continent around the same time. Organ, synth, tape loops and drum machines underscore this spaced-out incarnation of Casablanca market music.

Dreaming all day...

BR0TZM4NN / H4M1LT0N - ZULUT1ME (1996)

It was time for density. That block of wood. A brick. I listened to a few tracks from an old favorite.

R1CHARD BRAUT1GAN - LISTEN1NG T0 R1CHARD BR4UT1GAN (1970)

Readings from the author's selected works, including his most fanciful and otherworldly books, In Watermelon Sugar and Trout Fishing in America. Literary works are interspliced with field recordings: two sections of "sounds from my life," a mundane phone call, and a seemingly unscripted vignette of Richard ordering coffee. Wonderful.

Dream it...

ELZA S04RES - A MULHER D0 F1M D0 MUND0 (2016)

At 80, Elza is hitting her stride. Using Google translate, I poured over the stark and surreal beauty of her words. Not that you need it: the music is cabaret music from elsewhere. A unique dreamspace of samba, rock, no-wave and performance art.

Enter it here...

L0ND0N STUD10 GR0UP - ABSTR4CT1ONS 0F THE INDUSTR14L N0RTH (1966)

And a second Kirchin-based release featured today. Music De Wolfe library releases have always seemed to divert me away, however slightly but vitally, from the elevator-music sound of some of their other continental counterparts. Here we have highly idiosyncratic stock music that works by itself, spinning its own stories without the need to support or direct images. A gentle...am I dreaming, a Christmasy?.... touch infuses many of these tracks, as does a paradoxical kind of driving, industrially rhythmic foray into light jazz. Quizzical...

Quixotic....

S0FTWARE - CH1P MED1T4TI0N (1986)

Here is a third release from Innovative Communications, a rejoinder to the Asbjornsen book from a couple of days ago. Here, the cosmic dreams expand inwards, not outwards, into the micro-worlds of technology, bits and bytes. Ghost in the machine... A.I.,.the Turing Test. Can machines dream?  The Devil in the details.

Meditate...

D4G ER1K ASBJØRNS3N - C0SM1C DREAMS AT PL4Y (236 pages, 1996)

Definitive cultural history on 1970s German Progressive and Electronic Rock. A nice addendum to the space themed posts of last week... Sagan, Voyager I, etc.

Dreams, at play here...

D4V1D B0RDEN - MUS1C F0R AMPL1FIED KEYB04RD INSTRUMENTS (1981)

A natural solo extension of Borden's all synth band, Mother Mallard's PMC, this offering is an intimate and rather sumptuous collection of four tracks. Two of them, the ones both titled "The Continuing Story of Counterpoint," invoke an invisible, longer composition.These two are particularly mesmerizing, in the purest sense of the word, the one which that quack Mesmer himself meant it: magnetic, hypnotizing...Quack. Mallard. I'm seeing connections like Glen Beck....

Put it on repeat, and feel your cerebral cortex, steely resolve, or perhaps even your heart, begin to melt.

BERNARD W0MA - LIVE AT P1T0 BAR (1997)

The kind of bar music I continue to dream about: an almost sacred ethos of trance, dance and party. Woma rocks the gyil xylophone, a kind of balafon specific to the Dagara people of north Ghana--the artist's ancestral region--and Burkina Faso. Here, the background sounds of the revelers seem to add fuel to the sonic fire.

Dreaming it...

C0L1N ST3TS0N - S0RR0W (G0RECK1'S 3RD RE1MAGINED, 2016)

Gorecki's best-known work, his so-called "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" is put through a subtle ringer here. Like the dream process itself, this project is an exercise in making the familiar--not to the mention the gloomy--somehow strange again.

Dream it...

BERN1E KRAUSE - WH4LES, W0LVES & EAGLES OF GLAC1ER BAY (1998)

A meditative and somewhat harrowing series of field recordings from a legend in the métier of sound. A short-term member of The Weavers with Pete Seeger, Bernie would become an innovator in electronic music, nature recordings and the emergent field of sound ecology. He would make the influential Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music educational album in '67, and went on to record Moog and other synths on sessions for The Doors, George Harrison, and Stevie Wonder. He provided sound to Rosemary's Baby and Apocalypse Now, among many others. He went on to make dozens of nature recordings, of which this is one of my dreamy favorites.

DREAM - L1VING IN A DREAM (1979)

Beyond being a rarity-collector's choice, and the obvious thematic assertion of band name and album title, this is a surprising listenable album in the psych-folk lite genre. I was tipped off to this research material by a wonderful reader. Merci. Many thanks. Mange tak.

Living the dream...

M1H0 H4T0RI - ECDYS1S (2005)

Pop-tinged Novabossanova. Chanson. A daydream. It's drowsy, perhaps. But not at all sleepy.

Lucidly...

FUTUR0 ANT1C0 - S/T (1980)

Italian new-age industrial folk music, or maybe minimalist entho- electro shamanism . R. Sinigaglia--better known by some for his work in architectural theory--is one of the key members, the composer of the classical/ambient masterpiece, Riflessi.

Drift off...

H0RACEE ARN0LD - TALES 0F THE EX0NER4TED FLEA (1974)

Worth listening for the smoking vibes-infused opener alone. Worth staying for the rare fusion of jazz flute and ass-whooping funk. With Art Webb, J. Abercrombie, J. Hammer, S. Fortune, R. Towner.

Dream it like you mean it...

R0BERTO CACC1AP4GL1A - THE ANN STEEL REC0RD (1979)

Second Cacciapaglia release here. Very different. This joyous example of synthpop hyperactivity floats a kind of cheery Italo-disco brutalism, a celebration of the world of concrete, industry, technology and the materiality of the subject more than the transcendent reaches of the cosmos. Delicious, bewitching, creepy.

Dream it here...

PATTY HEARST - THE SLA TAPES (1974)

The collected six recordings Hearst sent to the media: messages for her parents and the authorities. Back once again to the political imaginary; back once again to the dramas and dreams of epistolary revelation...a mixture of the mundane, the revolutionary and the lure of extremism.

Here...

TERRY R1LEY - H4PPY ENDING (1972)

Snowing here. Sleepwalking while working: no time for movies, youtube, procrastination. Instead, Riley's film work. Here, two pieces from Santoni's Les Yeux Fermes. "Journey From a Death of a Friend" sounds like a calmer reworking of some Curved Air and Dervishes keyboard motifs; "Happy Ending" is one of few of Riley's saxophone recordings that, in under 20 minutes, is a multifaceted journey of dreams in itself.

Ferme les yeux ici...

TERRY R1LEY - LE SECRET DE LA V1E (1975)

From Whitelaw's film, also know as Lifespan. Features "G Song", one of Riley's more covered works, as well as five shortish incidental works that present hints of raga, carnival music, Jean-Michel Jarre-ish sweeps, and, as always, enough evolving loops to drive you slowly, beautifully and maddeningly towards a climax that may never come.

Dreaming...

C4RL SAGAN (FEAT. STEPHEN HAWK1NG) - A GL0RIOUS DAWN (2009)

A little songified stardust from a 7" single sided plate, produced by a White Stripe on his Third Man imprimatur. A hastily made, kitschy little auto-tune sample job and sound collage that nonetheless counts as likely the best astrophysics song ever written: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." I even had it on repeat at one point. The addition of the guest verse by Hawking is pure editorial genius. A cosmological cosmology. Or vice versa.

Dreams in dark energy...

L. R0N HUBB4RD - BATTLEF1ELD EARTH (1984)

And then there's this.

MURMURS 0F EARTH (THE V0YAGER INTERSTELLAR RECORD, 1977)

Aka "The Voyager Gold Record," pictured here, now physically somewhere beyond the heliosphere, edging into its 30,000 year journey through the Oort Cloud. The reference material here is the sound/music portion from the 1992 multimedia box set. The choices are both predictable and surprising, a fantastic artifact and depiction of its day, and ours still. What additions and excisions could we make to this artefact now, since 1977? This is an sonic project of dreams that both represents and enacts the wayward urgencies of the human imagination in concept, content, form and material.

Dreams in the heliopause...

SLEEP RESE4RCH_FAC1LITY - NOSTR0MO (2001)

What will this self-described somnolent dark ambient project from Scotland teach us about dreaming? Something approaching binaural beats emanate from the early tracks, in spite of the beatless composition. Similarly, there seems to be isochronic tonality going on. Will this work as lullaby, brainwave entrainment, or is this just a sleep-themed band name? The music is quite lovely, whitenoisish at times. I will sleep on it, literally.

Dream...

S4M PREK0P - S/T (1999)

Another dose of gin & tonic dream pop, an album for a different season, a different hemisphere. Cocktails with friends. A balcony. The sun umbrella shades us from the warm sun.

Drink it...

LUC FERR4R1 - PRESQUE R1EN (1995)

Ferrari, for me, is the composer/musician who best realized, actualized indeed materialized Cage's dictum “music is all around us if only we had ears”... much more so than Cage himself. Here is a collection of four of Ferrari's integral electronic recordings: Music Promenade (1969), Presque Rien N°1, Le Lever Du Jour Au Bord La Mer (1970), Presque Rien N°2, Ainsi Continue La Nuit Dans Ma Tête Multiple (1980) and Presque Rien Avec Filles (1990). These are sonic documentaries, a musical photography of locales at once real and dreamt.

Dream the dream...

G4RY BURT0N QU1NTET W/ E. WEBER - R1NG (1974)

Vibes.

Dreaming...

L1LY T0ML1N - AND TH4T'S THE TRUTH (1972)

This week's storytime comes in the form of a dramatic dialogue between a creepy five-year-old girl and her new neighbor, both played live by Tomlin. The wayward narrative, and authentically dark moments, seem to leave the audience uncertain of when to laugh. This is a benchmark in the comedic album category, masterly delivered by a true innovator in stand-up and performance. As literature, this work stands alongside the sinister surrealist folk-tales of Leonora Carrington and the paranoid, obsessive dispatches of Spalding Gray...this is a work about the uncomfortable truths of artifice.

Dreaming on it...

WH1TE ELEPHANTS & G0LDEN DUCKS - ENCHANT1NG MUS1CAL TREASURES FR0M BURMA (1996)

The gorgeous track "Dreaming of Beauty" brings the question of this blog into startling clarity: to what degree is the dream of the thing the thing itself? Regardless, bewildering folk and classical work from Myanmar here. The big surprise is the key role of Hawaiian guitar in Burmese musical tradition; slightly less surprising is the influence of Javanese gamelan. An amazing album courtesy of Shanachie.

Dream it here...