RAYM0ND SC0TT - S00TH1NG S0UNDS F0R BABY VOL. 1 (1962)

Accompanied by a booklet from the Gesell Institute of Child Development, Inc., this glorious record was on the cusp of the child-rearing self-help movement. Designed for infants from 1-6 months of age, the simple electronic repetitions may indeed help to produce somnolence in some kids or adults. It may also seem fairly jarring to those who prefer to relax their precious bundles of joy with whale sounds (particularly "Nursery Rhyme" with its incessant digital alarm-clock-sounding chime). At any rate, this stands as one of the first recordings designed specifically with the production of sleep in mind. A ground-breaking recording.

Dream...

REVEEN - RELAX W1TH REVEEN (1978)

The Master of Self-Suggestion gives us just over half an hour of guided meditation and 'planned suggestion.' He reminds us to "maintain at all times a calm, confident cheerful state of mind," which would be sound advice if the perpetually slowing tone of our teacher's voice wasn't so strange, or discomforting. We have tried this without much success five times, but invite you readers to try in earnest for yourselves. During our last session, some of us were able to let go. Some weren't.

"Beautifully at ease...so heavy...going down deeper..."

 

M4X R1CHTER - SLEEP (2015)

We have previously posted the benchmark of sleep-aid composition (Sleeping Tapes by Jeff Bridges), and Richter's own short, listenable version of this project. Today, we post the whole 8 1/2 hour sleepable version--researched and composed to sync with our sleeping patterns. We have tried this album once, and will try again before we post our thoughts and reactions in the comments. We would enjoy to hear your thoughts on the process or success of the work.

Sleep it all here: Part1, P2, P3, P4, P5

KIM'S BEDR00M (2000)

Two forays today into a particular subgenre that speckles our playlists at OWOD: soundtracks to an exhibition. Both come from 2000.

The first comes from Kim Gordon's project at Mu - De Witte Dame, Eindhoven. The soundtrack was released as part of the exhibition catalog from Purple Books. Features L. Sadier, Cat Power, J. Fahey, J. O'Rourke, I. Mori, Mazzacane, and Gordon herself alongside soundworks from artists including Raymond Pettibon, Mike Kelley, Rita Ackerman and others. 

Dream the scene...

MCENR0E - BILLY'S VISI0N (2000)

Our second art-show soundtrack comes from an exhibition at the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon. The mysterious mcenroe provides a lush, rural kind of downtempo trip-hop dreamscape that, at the time, seemed to overwhelm the quality of the exhibition itself. A rare, mesmerizing soundtrack. Surrealist cut-up-and-sample infused chill. Highly recommended.

Dreaming...

ELL10TT SH4RP / CARB0N - M0NSTER CURVE (1988)

It was the time, again, for guitar-centrism, axe-gods, urban dudes who shred. A day's required dose of percussive assault, melodic flight, and sonic density... a medicine best delivered on the strummable hand-held piano that is the guitar. There are days when lucid daydreaming occurs only when the head is stuffed with sound, when the cerebellum turns liquid and drips from the head holes, a result of the vibration of amplified metal strings.

30 years on, Sharp's Fibonacci-based minimalist experiments in rock continue to produce a rush of seratonin, a blissful, meditative state of quietude amidst the album's charging rhythm and unrelenting repetition.

Let it in to let it out...

RHYS CHATHAM - D1E D0NNERGÖTTER (1987)

Most of this classic(al) rock standout was played. 

K0SUKE HASH1ZUME - REICH: ELECTR1C C0UNTERP01NT (2015)

For some of us weaned on Metheny's version on Different Trains, this interpretation comes as a clean and tidy breath of air.

Dream...

BERN4RD FALAISE - DO (2000)

Halfway through the day, we inadvertently took a detour from serialism and repetition into a few albums of guitar based frenzy and cerebral nullification. The shift worked like a charm, the chaos and white noise giving us renewed mental focus, in the way static noise can ease the brain to sleep.

Falaise, a Quebec virtuoso, was probably the hardest test of our trance experiment. A rambunctious, stunning album that captures the attention as much as loses it. A sonic journey well worth the slight fall in office productivity--and concentration--for its quality of frontal cortex refreshment.

Do...

FUSH1TSUSHA - WITHDRAWE, THIS SABLE D1SCL0SURE ERE DEV0T'D (1998)

Haino and co. were played. Strangely, the albums kept bringing us back to Central-Eastern Canada. Here, a live concert in Victoriaville, QC, attended by the author, who can recognize his own unique cheering after each song. For some of us, this is yoga. Here, the mind seeps out, uncontained by itself.

Withdrawe, this...

FRED FR1TH - THE T0P OF H1S HEAD (1989)

We end this daily sample close to where yesterday's post begins: a captivating soundtrack work for a Canadian film (Peter Mettler, Director) by this famed axe-man with strong, long-held ties to Monsieur R. Lussier, below. This folk-ambient dreamscape features contributions by Jane Siberry, Ann Bourne and J. Derome, for those who like their Canadiana.

"Underwater dream..."

RENÉ LUSS1ER - CHR0NIQUE D'UN GEN0C1DE ANNONCÉ (1998)

Dream music for a nightmare. Music for the film Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold, a documentary on the Rwandan civil war. Harrowing and beautiful works from this legendary Quebecois guitarist and composer. With musique actuelle all-stars J. Derome, R.M. Lepage, P. Tanguay, and Tom Walsh.

Dream it if you can...

ALLIED VAN LINES / DICK BOYELL - MUSIC TO MOVE FAMILIES BY (1960)

Another corporate recording today--an album of light pop, Latin jazz and exotica recorded as a promotional giveaway and soundtrack for people moving homes with Allied in the early 60s. Apparently Boyell had made a name for himself doing advertising music, and had made a similar type of promo recording for a paper company. An amazing concept, a lovely recording, and another fine example of the synergy between sound, capital and dreamworlds.

Dreaming it...

D4VID LYNCH - THE B1G DRE4M (2013)

Lynch's second studio album makes a nice extension--and counterpoint--to the mood provided by yesterday's Sleep Party post. The track with Lykke Li is a standout, but there are plenty of skewed blues structures, half-spoken vocals, reverb-washed guitar and moody echo to pull one into this album in a sonic sense. The lyrics, of course, are something else again. Here both the beauties and the frustrations of "dream logic" become evident, as do the pleasures and pitfalls of a blog dedicated to this oxymoron.

The Big One...

SLEEP P4RTY PE0PLE - WE WERE DR1FTING 0N A SAD S0NG (2012)

A simple slice of Danish surrealist low-fi dreampop to help us mood, brood and daydream our way through the day... We are indeed Sleep Party folks here at OWOD.

Start the party ...

D1CKIE LANDRY - F1FTEEN SAX0PHONES (1977)

This long-time member of the Philip Glass Ensemble cut a few records of his own in the 1970s--including this pulsing gem of ethereality. The album is comprised of three works that would likely be called minimalist, despite their sweeping monumentality. All parts, sax and flute, are played by Landry with the assistance of an intricate series of Revox tape delays. The last track is a more jazz-inflected live recording from The Kitchen in 1974. A fantastic, delta-wave-inducing, lesser-known masterpiece.

Dream it...

ANNEA L0CKWOOD - A S0UND MAP OF THE HUDS0N R1VER (1989)

Here is the legendary composer and experimentalist recording, mixing and collaborating with the Hudson River, from the headwaters in the Adirondacks to the Atlantic. 15 different site specific recordings trace both the natural environments of the river and the human contexts it flows through, connects with, and feeds. This is a recording that is embedded in the liquid mental zones formed by the pitches of flowing water and our dream projections of nature itself.

Dreaming downstream...

Previous dreamsites: New Hope, PA  / Vancouver, BC / Glacier Bay, AK / Tropical Rainforest / American Fast Food Restaurants / American Offices  

HA1LU MERG1A & H1S CLASS1CAL INSTRUMENT: SHEM0NMUANAYE (1985)

It was time for more African electronic--Eygptian "tezeta" folk/pop ballads augmented with Yamaha keys, Fender Rhodes, and drum machine in this case. The album may be familiar to all you all global groovers out there, but remains a significant minor subtheme to our dreamtime posts nonetheless, a rich aural fusion of contexts. Check out our El-Omari and Bebey posts for more of this exploration.

Dream Hailu here...

G0RDON JENK1NS - SEVEN DREAMS (1953)

Jenkins cut his musical chops as a pianist in a prohibition era St. Louis speakeasy. His stature as an arranger and songwriter dates from the 1930s. He worked for Paramount, NBC, and radio before becoming staff arranger and eventual musical director of Decca records. He penned a few million-selling songs and lead arrangements for Johnny Cash, Sinatra, The Weavers, Billie Holiday, and Harry Nilsson, among others.

This sublime dreamwork is a concept album--a vinyl musical perhaps, or a radio-play-on-record--that combines detailed orchestration with jingles, ditties, and story-within-story narration: a sonic travelogue through the narrator's seven dreams.

This slice of unsettling weirdness/genius is notable for making the Billboard Top Ten, and for containing the obvious source melody and lyrics for Cash's hit "Folsom Prison Blues" (see "Dream #2 - The Conductor"). Jenkins sued; Cash settled out of court. For us at OWOD, this album represents one of the best conceived, honestly rendered and phenomenologically accurate documents of the human-made artifices we call dream logic. It's also a striking, cross-perceptual (pan-sensual?) representation of the most ineffable of subjects--dreams themselves--and the near impossibility of their verisimilitude.

Dream it...

OWOD MIX #01 - DREAMS THAT UTTER YOUR NAME (2017)

On loop at OWOD: random research. Songs in alphabetical order.
Mood & brood...dream here

1) Carlton - Do You Dream 2) David Shea - The Dream 3) Ryuichi Sakamoto/Arto Lindsay - The Dreaming 4) Alan Lorber Orch - Hang On To A Dream 5) Maxime de la Rochefoucauld - Le Sommeil Somnambule 6) Mia Farrow - Lullabye from Rosemary's Baby 7) Michel Houellebecq - On Se Reveillait Tôt 8) Sex Mob - Quiet 9) Patrick Gleeson - Take the 5:10 to Dreamland 10) Tomita - Reverie 11) Aksak Maboul - Scratch Holiday 12) Burroughs/Somerville - Silver Smoke of Dreams 13) Ramuntcho Matta - Sunset 14) Eurythmics - This City Never Sleeps 15) Fred Frith - Underwater Dream 16) Gary Wilson - When You Walk Into My Dreams