D10N MCGREG0R - THE FURTHER S0MNILOQU1ES OF D10N MCGREG0R (2004)

In the spirit of book-keeping here at OWOD, we must now present the long promised 3rd collection of Mr. McGregor's nocturnal transmissions from the other side of consciousness. As you may recall, this fellow dreams out loud, delivering an unequaled, often narrative, first-person reportage directly from the depths of slumberland. I recently learned there is a fourth volume of these 1960s recordings that has been released.

Hear the inside of the dreaming brain here...

ALAN JEFFERS0N - GALACT1C N1GHTMARE (2015)

Self-recorded in the UK from 1979-1985--and previously released only on cassette--this space-based musical drama may be less of a nightmare than its title suggests. But viewed in a lineage with HG Well's War of the Worlds, this work offers up a compelling dystopian adventure rife with dark disco and campy nightmarescapes.

Dream it...

DANTE / JOHN C1ARDI - THE INFERNO (CANTOS 1-8) (1959)

Folkways released this Immortal Drama of a Journey Through Hell, with the poet Ciardi guiding the way with monotone severity. "Abandon all hope all ye who enter here," Dante tells us. Indeed, the relationships between nightmares, death and even hell is on full display here. These connections--ingrained through centuries of acculturation--continue to underpin our unconscious thoughts and dreams. And they continue to bubble up in our waking hours, guiding both our social interactions and civilizing impulses (see Freud, here).

Dreaming Divine Dark Comedy...

J0E FRANK - DREAMS IN PROGRESS (AN OWOD MIX)

Time slows to viscous trickle around here. Days, nights come and go imperceptibly. The dog lays unmoving on the floor. The employees stare blankly at their screens. We fight to keep going.

Joe Frank (1938-2018) made over 250 hours of distinct, mindblowing radio works for NPR and KCRW Santa Monica over the course of 40 years. His monologues, dramas, and improvisations speak to the dreaminess of late-night America, the media of radiowaves and car travel, and the immersive, wayward possibilities of narrative voice itself. Here, we select and sample eight works (four hours) of short and long length spanning much of his career: specifically his works on (and within) the subject of dreams.

RIP, JF...

1891 C0LLECTION: READ BY BELL0NA TIMES (2013)

Here are a few quick associative rejoinders to our posts, yesterday, on Sigmund Freud. The first, from LibriVox, an organization dedicated to the "acoustical liberation of books in the public domain" looks at 1891--the year, incidentally, Freud published his first solo effort, On Aphasia, and moved into his flat at Berggasse 19 in Vienna, where he would write all of his major works. This anthology, however, has nothing to do with Freud. Instead we get 4 hours of amazing period pieces, set firmly within the dreamscape of the Modern: texts by Sir Conan Doyle, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde and Lafcadio Hearn; pieces on American Hotels, Bohemian Scandals, Soup, and the Legacy of Antiquity.

Dream it all: Part One and Part Two.

D10N MCGREG0R - THE DRE4M W0RLD OF D10N MCGREG0R (1964)

Our first test subject for Freud's ideas comes in the form of this groundbreaking album from the guy who dreams out loud in his sleep. This is our second offering from McGregor, and we have a third one we may post at some time. Here the dream-state is laid bare--not recounted from memory--and open to analysis in ways that Freud himself could only have dreamed. These are monologues from "inside" the subject and his dream, not a description as much as a experiential notebook.

Dream it here.

ALBERT CAMUS / J4MES JENNER - THE PLAGUE (1947/2015)

While Parts One and Three of Camus' classic allegorical novel provide the most appropriate visceral descriptions of the state of disease and corporeal entropy (physical and social), we have provided Jenner's whole translation and 10 hour reading. For some, a narrated story is the best accompaniment for drifting off, dreaming, and distracting you while you hold your abdomen, and its swirling innards, in your sweaty hands.

An epidural for an epidemic...Part 1, Part 2.

JUDE C0W4N M0NTAGUE / STEVE LAYT0N - CA1RO C0MPRESS1ON (2015)

Four short text-based soundworks composed in response to photographs, broadcast on Resonance FM, and released on Linear Obsessions. Layton provides restrained, airy and meditative sonic touches to these poetic snapshots. Cowan's voice is prim and inquisitive, her words forming clear pictures and evocative mini-narratives with what is otherwise hazy washes of text and unclear contexts. In under 12 minutes, this recording put us in a mood.... We put it on repeat. (More of the music for art genre here)

Dreammapping (Dreamsnapping)....

STEVE MART1N - PURE DR1VEL (1998)

Our narrative interlude comes from Mr. Martin reading from what is seemingly, and mainly, a suite of comedic fictional essays--a kind of speculative non-fiction of the mundane. Conventions of narrative and argumentation are toyed with and dressed in each others clothes. Further lessons in writing, in the ability to guide the brain to dream meaning into what the author declares openly as nonsense.

Dreaming...

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...

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...

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...

STEVE  BUSCEM1 + ELL10TT SHARP - RUB OUT THE W0RD (2016)

The dream lover has a crush on Buscemi, and she owns a Burroughs edition that is mystifyingly rare. (Later, one goes looking for old Brautigan books in the local second hand shops with the dream lover. Two are found, and left as some kind of aides-memoires. One must return in 30 years to reclaim the purchases.)

Rubbing...

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...

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...

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...

P4UL B0WLES - BLACK STAR AT THE P01NT 0F DARKNESS (Music, Stories, Recordings, 1991)

More story time.

Dream on...

(We have more Bowles here, his musique concrete project from the late 1950s)

GAV1N BRY4RS / JUAN MUNOZ - A MAN 1N A R00M, GAMBL1NG (1997)

"Good evening. Welcome once again to A Man in a Room, Gambling...." Thus begins one of the greatest radio shows to have ever been broadcast from BBC Radio. 

Bryars composed the music for radio concept project by the late Spanish artist Juan Muñoz; the results are mesmerizing, beautiful and funny.

Dream on...

BAS1L K1RCH1N & CL1VE LESL1E - INSPECT0R CR0CHET'S LAST CASE (2005)

Narrative for the airways.

Dream it...

1GGY P0P / TARWATER / ALV4 N0TA - LEAVES OF GRASS (2016)

"I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers"

--Walt Whitman