ARZA ANA1AK - TXALAPARTA '75 IR41LA (1975)

The dreamlife of the collector: the addictive, unquenchable desire for the complete, a total archive, a museum of the rare. Our quest for DIVerso albums supplies the requisite fix--the sixth in the series. Follow links here to scroll back through the entries.

This is the album that kicked it all off. A Basque duo conducting serialist, ethno-folk inspired percussion experiments on the txalaparta that are at once simple, wonky, maddening, meditative and beautiful. Stark yet warm, patently "acoustic".... This is eminently dreamy trance music made from regular and irregular tapping systems, and almost non-existent melodic/tonal variation.

Dream while collection dreaming here...

WELC0ME TO DREAMLAND: AN0THER JAP4N (1985)

Another Dreamland. A fantastic Celluloid compilation featuring the best and brightest of Japan's 1980s experimental/new-wave/no-wave scene. "Another Japan," perhaps, although for many of us on the other side of globe, this was more appropriately another sonic world. While a few of the album's participants have gone on to greatness or infamy--Keiji Haino, Haco, Tenko, guest Frith--many are unfamiliar to us at OWOD. This compilation is a slice of time past, a fair companion to this previous 1985 compilation post.

A slice of time past, but also a dreamland of time passed.

P0LMO P0LPO - THE SC1ENCE OF BREATH (2002)

Ripped from a disc purchased in Montreal in the early years of the Millenium. An album about yogic breathing. Evocative of a time and place, sounds still able to flare both memories and dreams of certain people and events, including those best forgotten. Dry ambient, flecks of glitch, throbbing techno...but then hints of field recording and acoustic instrumentation emerge, cold tones turning warm. A heart pushing oxygenated blood.

Inhale, hold, exhale...dream.

TUXEDOM00N / CULT W1TH N0 NAME - BLUE VELVET REV1SITED (2015)

The soundtrack to a documentary about the making of Lynch's infamous work. The film is not a linear documentary, more of an impressionistic metafilm. This sound collaboration is a suitable, dreamy, counterpoint. More neo-classical, ambient and even jazz-centred than Badalamenti's own haunting score, this work is nonetheless spacious and atmospheric. It pulls the Lynchian universe into a new gravity and orbit.

Dreaming...

WAYNE H0RV1TZ/THE F0UR PLUS 0NE ENSEMBLE - FR0M A WINDOW (2001)

Another subversive work from this keyboard/piano legend, the second here at OWOD. The pastoral, meditative tinge to these tracks belies a brooding intensity and complexity. Sonic landscapes that, at times, move from landscape portraiture to a sort of psychological expressionism. With E. Kang, R. Watts, Skerik, and trombonist J. Priester.

Always dreamy... 

M1D0RI TAK4DA / MASAH1T0 SAT0H - LUNAR CRU1SE (1991)

A stunning lesser-known release by Takada--the creator of Through the Looking Glass (1983) and co-creator of the two fantastic, Mkwaju Ensemble albums--and Satoh, a prolific pianist. Haruomi Hosono guests on all tracks. "Cruise" is an apt title: the songs cut a path of estrangement into seemingly familiar gestures--synthpop, quasi-ritualistic percussion, ambient architectures, improv and jazz angles--leads you at moments into the uncanny.

Dream...

DREAM1ES - AURALGRAPH1C ENTERTA1NMENT (1973)

It is a great friend that helps one with his research. This is the only record by the enigmatic Mr. B. Holt, who, it is told, penned, composed and learned to play all the instruments (guitar and moog, mainly) and parts on this rock-pop collage opera from scratch in 18 months. Written as two responses to The Beatles' "Revolution #9", this recording is structured in two parts, "Program Ten" and "Program Eleven." This album singularly covers much ground of this blog: soundscape, dream pop, avant psych-folk, cut-ups and synth futurism. A perfect way to kick off today's rotation.

Induce the Dreamies...

PAUL1NE OLIVER0S, DAVID R0THENBERG, TIM0THY H1LL ‎– C1CADA DREAM BAND (2014)

Absolutely beautiful...

"2013 marked the arrival of millions of periodical cicadas to the New York Metropolitan area. These musical insects appear only once every seventeen years. On the occasion of this auspicious event, Rothenberg performed a series of concerts together with composer and deep listener Oliveros, overtone singer Hill, and live singing insects brought in from the trees. The ensemble of digital accordion, clarinets with electronically enhanced nature sounds, and harmonic singing is certainly a trio unlike anything heard before."

Dream it...

PENTA SALES C0RP - PLAY IT SAFE! VOL. 4 (1972)

Today's narrative interlude is a spoken-word pièce de résistance that doubles as one of our "dreamwork of capital" entries. This album--a hilarious dramatic dialogue of mundane conversations, banter, arguments and bickering between a married couple from, perhaps, Queens or Long Island--is actually a recording designed to be played loud on repeat when you've left the house as a deterrent to potential burglars. A conversation to give the impression that someone is home. Here, the dream of safety, the home, becomes a sales item that is set into a well developed, banal theatre of the absurd. The script would make an incredible stage play!

Dream...

DRUM ISL4ND - DRUM ISL4ND (1997)

Drum Island was a Norwegian electronic trio from Tromsø. This is their only release. The band Röyksopp is a spin-off. The café music you could have heard in the late 90s, but never did. Addictive.

Dreaming downtempo...

LAPPISH J0IK SONGS FR0M N0RTHERN NORW4Y (1956)

When you need to dream more about Northern Norway, Ethnic Folkways comes to the rescue.

K4NYE WEST - MY BE4UT1FUL DARK TW1STED F4NTASY (2010)

As previously threatened, we end the listening day with a case study of the questions concerning dream vs. fantasy, embodiment vs. escapism.

Pleasant dreams...

PH1LIP C0RNER - SAT1E SL0WLY (2014)

Three works in a 'classical' vein today. For this blog, this offering displays the perfected renditions of Satie's major works (with a few minor ones thrown in as well.) Space, and more space. Corner's interpretations for the Unseen Worlds label steer the composer away from any notion of "furniture music" and instead zooms out, macrocosmically, until the full sonic architecture comes into view: room, building, site. The pieces move between saunter and crawl, notes left hanging in an imperceptible breeze. Just the right speed to, at times, forget the music is there at all. Minutes pass. You realize you've been listening to the inside of your own head.

Dreaming Part 1 here and Part 2 here...

EL0D1E L4UTEN - P1AN0 W0RKS REVISITED (2010)

Our second Unseen Worlds offering today is a compilation building on the artist's 1983 Piano Works album. Swirling minimalism with quite literal sonic undercurrents of aquatic viscosity. Of particular interest is the longish middle work, "Concerto for Piano and Orchestral Memory" (1984) featuring the polymath cellist Arthur Russell.

Necessary dreaming...

CHR1ST0PHER BUTTERFIELD / KURT SCHW1TTERS - MUSIC FOR KLEIN AND BEUYS / URSONATE / PILLAR OF SNAILS (1993)

An extremely rare edition and interpretation of Schwitters' Ursonate (1922-32), his epic vocal/sound composition. The CD was a gift from this Canadian composer himself in 1993 and includes two beautiful works of his own. A Swiss label owned the Schwitters copyright/license, and this album--marked "not for sale"--was nonetheless legally threatened and deleted into obscurity. Butterfield's take on Schwitters is cool, understated and precise, a work of particularity and aural estrangement. Out of Ursonate renditions heard and seen by Jaap Blonk, Eberhard Blum, Christian Bök and others, this remains our perennial favorite.

R1CHARD WAHNFR1ED (AKA K. SCHULZE) - T1ME ACT0R (1979)

Our fourth posting from the Innovative Communication label, another Berlin-School recording of techno-romance and hazy, lazy nostalgia. A spacy, Wagner-influenced side to Herr Schulze's sprawling catalogue.

Dream acting...

PAUL B0WLES - THE P00L K III (2013)

To date, our Paul Bowles post remains the the highest visited page at OWOD. In honor of all you fans, we are pleased to present POOLK3--perhaps the strangest recording in the writer/composer's oeuvre. Although this rare ambient/musique concrète recording was originally mis-attributed to Brion Gysin (and even released under his name), the work has been established as a late 1950s experiment best quoted with reference to Bowles' own autobiography: "a realm of sound that creates a dreamlike journey without a clear point of origin or destination—a sojourn to be experienced in its entirety, without stopping."

Dream...

SENY4WA - MENJAD1 (2015)

A grinding and challenging dreamwork of noise, drone and traditional country by this Indonesian avant-folk duo. Extended vocal techniques, samples, and the bambuwukir--a dual string/percussion instrument designed by member W. Suryadi--formulate this ritual. Dense, a head filled with fog. Submerged melodies, and memories, from a time and place that has never previously existed, before now.

Dream ...

L0REN MAZZ4CANE-C0NN0RS - THE DEPART1NG 0F A DREAM VOL. 5 (2016)

LMC has been working on his "dream" series for decades now--a tribute to Miles Davis' masterpiece "He Loved Him Madly" from the On The Corner sessions, and released on Get Up With It (1974). Another fantastic, moody series of blues mutations from one of our favorite guitarists and inspirations. A work about dreaming that also enacts the theme itself.

Dream it...