0RUÃ - R0MA (20I9)

Just a total incendiary, throbbing, fuzzed-out pleasure today. Music for strutting, tripping, head-banging and perhaps dry-humping. We can't get enough of these enigmatic gents from Brazil and, it would seem, often Boise, Idaho.


Meltdown rock n' roll for lovers and dreamers.

MOT0HIRO N4KASH1MA - AND I WENT TO SLEEP (2004)

It has been hard to sleep. Some years now, some seasons. And yet dreams permeate the waking hours. I can't sleep so I sleepwalk while awake. Patience is a virtue. I thank anyone who still possesses any. Or at least dreams about it. Love, happiness, and blissful bewilderment to you all. 

Mr. Nakashima is from Osaka. These spacious pieces are as warm & cuddly as they are downtempo chill.

Dream it here...

YUN0 - M00D1E (2018)

We have, admittedly, been neglecting our duties. The lawn has turned to hay and sparks with the rustle of the dry breeze.

The only breezy summer album that has sustained our sweaty, hallucinating selves is this EP. And it's not so cheerful, essentially a heartbreak album. Nonetheless, if you will please pardon the tautology, the chillwave chill of this album does provide some chilliness with which to comfortably chill.

Here, like the consolation of an air-conditioner in an otherwise stifling, lonely apartment. 

ANDRÉ H4MEL / LA NEF ENSEMBLE - LES MUSIQUES D'URN0S (2017)

This outstanding release by Quebec composer Hamel features the Early Music NEF ensemble. The stunning project attempts to resurrect the 5000 year old music and instruments of the Urnos shepherd people in the Harappan-era Indus Valley.

As I understand it, evidence of advanced musical notation was discovered in the region around 1940. Hamel has spent years piecing together and imagining the melodies and musical rituals of this marginal historical community, resulting in this bagpipe-addled masterpiece of primordial revelry, droning folk/baroque tones and  mystifying, dream-worthy beauty.

Dream it here...

DREAM S0NGS AND HEAL1NG S0UNDS IN THE RA1NF0RESTS OF MALAYS1A (1995)

Traditional music from the peoples of the Malaysian rainforest to aid and guide dreams, interact with the spirit world, and provide curative benefits. While we can't attest to the last two claims, we did find, in our limited testing, that this music works best while fully asleep, or when you need some mental space while performing taskwork while awake.

Dream to dream ...

M1LT0N CARD0NA - CAMBUCHA (CARMEN) (1999)

Ending today's posts with some ass-shaking Caribbean party music for backyard decks and BBQs.

Dream it...

N4SH THE SLASH - DREAMS AND N1GHTMARES (1979)

The late Mr. Slash (1948-2014) divided his record into Left Side and Right Side, an apropos reminder of the dream/nightmare dialectic and the brain's conjoined hemispheres. The dream state: ingrained and engrained...wax cylinders and neural plasticity.

This stark offering of synth-drenched sonic architecture was composed as a soundtrack to Luis Buñuel's silent film Un Chien Andalou (1928). You may be a peculiar sort, one able to groove to this moody, propulsive score, but you may find yourself feeling claustrophobic and slightly techno-fascistic, if perhaps in an Ontario kind of way. Synthpop for sweating. New wave for discomfort. Space goth blues for tossing and turning...

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...

PAUL WEST0N - MUS1C F0R DREAMING (1950)

My parents had a 1960s pressing of this album with a different cover, and a number of other romance-mood records. I listened to them with some dedication around the age of eight or nine, and again as a kitschy pleasure about another decade later. This shorter, earlier edition of the album (recordings from 1945, a clear example of proto-easy-listening) still evokes a number of sick cheesecake pleasures. The dream of post-war pleasantness is explicit here, with hindsight, as is its placeless, formless utopian fictions of nostalgia, which nonetheless emote as entirely real. Another album about dreams; I doubt many could attain dreamstate listening to this unbearably soft, overly lovely kind of infernal racket.

Try it...

THE BE4CH B0YS - ENDLESS SUMMER (1974)

Enough said...

PEAK1NG L1GHTS - THE F1FTH STATE OF CONSCI0USNESS (2017)

Disco-tinged dub pop... a summer fave.

CERR0NE - VAUD0U AUX CAR4ÏBES (1980)

A bit more erotico-disco--and another soundtrack--to keep you in the mood, for summer and all of its pleasures, real and imagined.

Dream it...

LCD S0UNDSYSTEM - AMER1CAN DREAM / CALL THE P0L1CE (2017)

An EP:

"You took acid and looked in the mirror.... Oh the revolution was here/ That would set you free/ From the Bourgeoisie..."

DE4TH CUBE K - DREAMAT0R1UM (1994)

Processed-guitar soundscapes, illbient noodling and grinding mechanics from the best chicken-bucket-on-the-head-wearing musician on the globe. Production and accompaniment by the faithful Mr. Laswell.

Check yourself in for some Dream Convalescence ...

C0SM1C EYE - DRE4M SEQUENCE (1972)

Because you need your REM sleep when sick: the late Indian-born Amancio D'Silva provided some of us sicklings with a psych-rock remedy steeped in sonic dreamscapes.

Sequencing them...

K1M S0-HEE - P'ANS0RI (K0REA'S EP1C VOC4L ART & INSTRUMENTAL MUS1C (1972)

Music for Korean musical dramas--a blend of classical, folk and pop meant primarily to supplement theatrical performances. Korean national treasure Kim So-Hee supplied vocals next to an all-star band on gayageum, haegeum, flute, janguu, and kuhmoongo (For those who love these sounds and instruments, check out this previous gayageum post).

Music for reverie and revelry...

ART0 L1NDSAY - CU1DAD0 M4DAME (2017)

Pop day from Mr. Lindsay, one of our perennial all-time favorites. This is his first solo release in 13 years: pure magic, dream and fantasy with atabaques-driven Candomblé textures, lascivious lyrics, spikey guitar and plenty of lush studio wizardry. We have sure missed him!

..... it...

(More Arto here)

G4B0R SZABO - DREAMS (1968)

Jazz to infuse our daysleeps and nightdreams...

This is a gypsy-tinged work of avant-lounge guitar fingerwork, french horn seduction and orchestral longing. And, as it reminds us, "half the day is night."

JAWB0NE OF AN ASS: MUS1CA DE CUBA PRE-CASTR0 (1955)

Popular Cuban folk-jazz from the pre-revolutionary nightclub days. Features the quijada, the titular instrument--a percussive rattle made from actual donkey jaws, and teeth.

More party music to dream to, as well as of...

AFRICA: WITCHCRAFT AND R1TUAL MUSIC (1975)

To purge some of the demons of our last daemonic posts, we present this attempt at exorcism. Of course, it can be easily said this album replicates much of the baroque--and nonsensical--spiritual dreamwork of the albums below. Nonetheless, we in good faith present these fantastic, indeed "spell-binding," Fanshawe field recordings from Kenya and Tanzania as some sort of therapeutic offering for whatever demons we may have attracted or repelled with the last posting. We'll likely have to post another offering later to quell the demons we evoke with this exoticist offering...an exorcism of an exorcism, exoticization of the exotic...infinite regress, progress. (Nonesuch did change the title in later issues, thankfully particularizing the two actual nations from the continent).