B0RN OUT OF DREAMS (1985)

OWOD has previously mentioned a special, personal fascination with the year 1985 and even posted Wang Chung. Today, we have three more. The dreamstate is openly referenced and evoked in all. 

1985 a random date with only sentimental fixations that are too uninteresting to share. I'll say this: in the small island west-coast town where I grew up, you had to go elsewhere for your epic dream-sounds. A friend in the city had this industrial/noise taste-changer: NWW, Muslimgauze, P16.D4, Enrico Piva...wonderful!

Dream it here...

 

S0UNDS FROM THE MUS1C INTERI0R (MUSIC INTER1OR SAMPLER) (1985)

In mid 80s Canada, Attic Records was big into the weightless sounding adult instrumental scene. This record could sometimes be seen in your local bookstore or new-age boutique of the era, usually with Windham Hill or Heart-Music Sri Chinmoy cassettes. I didn't own it, but easily could have. I didn't know much about the new age, or architectural music, but I knew a girl who played ethereal flute through a Mr. Microphone and almost killed me with beauty. 

With Seigen Ono, Ichiko Hashimoto, Masahide Sukama, Yoshio Suzuki

Dream It...

SLEEPERS (1985)

This 1985 collection of "lull music," compositions and sounds from many of the now legendary sonic artists who found themselves in NY during the 80s. Whether this album of not-quite-soothing, dissonant timbres can fairly qualify as a "sleep aid" is debatable, but we'll take them at their word and label it so. Some people can sleep through anything. And I'm sure those were crazy days, where drifting off to this made sense. Thanks to P.E. for this, and many others. 

P. Oliveros, A. Lockwood, I. Mimaroglu, T. Johnson, A. Knowles, etc.

For you dedicated sleepers, you...

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.

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.

ANNA H0MLER - BREADW0MAN (1985)

Otherworldly dream-songs. These ritualistic pieces--sung in melodic glossolalia, a made-up language system (or what Lisa Gerrard calls "vocabular")--are based in Homler's work in performance art. The titular character, complete with a bread mask, performs versions of these striking works in shamanistic, primordial fashion. The music comes from Mr. S. Moshier, who provides a suitably future/rustic backdrop. The works often seem to have emerged from time itself, embodied through the kind of prelinguistic, prehistoric and presymbolic expression that Julie Kristeva called the "chora"--a revolution in poetic language.

Dream...

SH4NKAR - S0NG F0R EVERY0NE (1985)

L. Shankar's 10-string electric violin meets drum machines and virtually orgasmic soprano sax. From the orgasmic year of 1985. 

Shankar, Jan Garbarek, Trilok Gurtu, Zakir Hussain.

Dream...