ORCHESTRE B4LIGH HAMD1 - L0VE ST0RY (1971?)

Here's a record of Eygptian mood-jazz from one of the country's greatest songwriters and composers. Psych-tinged easy listening. Off-kilter serialism, diversions into melodic reverie, a sound that manages to make the exotic exotic.

Dream it here...

EL1ANE R4D1GUE - MILA'S J0URNEY INSP1RED BY A DREAM (1987)

Two electronic dream-themed works today. Tried and tested while awake, in fatigue and in sleep. Highly recommended.

Ms. Radigue's Mila is Milarepa, the 11th century Tibetan Yogi. His place in sacred history is etched into the Kagyu "Whispered Transmission" lineage of Tibetan Buddhism; he is one of the sect's so-called Four Pillars. It is claimed he built and founded the large, nine-storey towered monastery in Lhodrag. His story is one of spite, revenge, sorcery and murder, as well as redemption, extreme self-deprivation and eventual enlightenment. He is often depicted with a greenish tone...for much of his later life he supposedly subsisted on a diet of nettle tea, a practice that tinted his skin.

Radigue spent over 20 years studying Milarepa's life, songs and poems, this 1984 recording being one of many works from this period. Robert Ashley narrates the story of the dream-inspired titular journey, while Lama Rinpoche interprets Mila's song--poems that, it is said, would erupt spontaneously from the Yogi's lips in times of enlightened states of consciousness. Radigue scores the polyvocal narrative with an unyielding yet gentle field of drone.

Dreaming into action...

ANNEA L0CKWOOD - TH0USAND YE4R DREAM1NG (1993)

As many of our posts are clearly beginning to suggest, many dream-makers tend to look eastward. Represented in sound, the patently uncanny logic of dreams often seems to lend itself to the foreign, the exotic, the orientalist. Thus even an album like this one--ostensibly about the Lascaux cave paintings--transforms contemplation of paleolithic life into something both tribal and zen-like. Here, didgeridoos, conch shells, rattles and frame-drums pull a brass and woodwind ensemble into a kind of primal and primativist study of timbre. A beautiful evocation from the fearful, mystical and mystifying youth of our species. (Check our previous Lockwood post here).

We post the 2007 reissue with Floating World (1999), an unprocessed tape-based, sound collage. 1,000 years.

TAKU SUG1M0TO - OPPOS1TE (1998)

One of only three releases by the briefly existing hatNOIR imprint from the Hat folks in Switzerland. A solo recording from this versatile guitarist and frequent Otomo Yoshihide collaborator. Spaciousness, quietness and understatement--restrained understatement even--permeate this solo recording, as well as our waking dreams.

Breathe it in...