Friday 15 December 2017

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...

Monday 11 December 2017

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.


Friday 1 December 2017

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...

Thursday 30 November 2017

OWOD MIX #02 - FLOUNDER, BE FALCON (2017)

A snapshot of playlist-singles from our dream-fodder folder: alphabetical by artist.

1) F. Hardy - Rêve 2) F. Sinatra - Deep in a Dream 3) I. Mori - Dream 4) J. Struntz & A. Farah - Tangle of Dreams 5) Lali Puna - Together In Electric Dreams 6) L. Anderson - Dreaming of Life Before Birth 7) L. Hazlewood - Won't You Tell Your Dreams? 8) Reed/Cale - A Dream 9) L. Connors/S. Langille - I Wish I Didn't Dream 10) M. Monroe - I Found a Dream 11) M. Chieko - Dreams 12) Nexus/Earle Birney - Ebb Begins from Dream 13) NOMA - Desert Dog 14) P. Bowles - Sleeping Song 15) P. Scherer - Horses Star in My Dreams 16) Phew - Dream 17) P. Glass - Video Dream 18) R. Blake - Nica's Dream 19) R. Slavin - Dreamzone 525 20) R. Lussier - Les Fesses de la Reine 21) R. Amarante - Fall Asleep 22) Sleeping People - Out Dream 23) Stirrup - Domi's Dream 24) Suicide - Dreams 25) S. Ciani - Thirteenth Voice 26) Trans Am - Night Dreaming 27) V. Astley - Afternoon: Summer of Their Dreams 28) Y. Honda - I Dream about You

Wednesday 29 November 2017

HANNE DARB0VEN - OPUS 17A (1996)

We played a long composition from an art installation today. Double bassist R. Black performs the late German conceptual artist's Opus 17A, one of her maddening "mathmatical compositions" from her Wunschkonzert series, a grapho-maniacal installation of over 1,000 pages of notes, numbers and notations. This is a rare disc from the Dia Center, and another exemplar leitmotif of music for art.

For us today, it's music for dreaming while working...
M4R1O SCH1AN0 - AND H1S ALL ST4RS (1978)

We listened to this today: our 10th of the 12 DIVerso Series. This is an all-star big band that includes only Schiano on his sax with subtle synths by a Mr. F. De Sanctis--part lounge act, part dancehall gig--that soars and stumbles, swings, slumps and shrieks. We do love pursuing the collection of a good, rare series.

Keeping the dream alive...


M0NS4NTO CHEM1CAL C0MP4NY - ONB SAMBA / M0NS4NTO MARCH (1953)

Then this. With the help of the Don Juan Quartet, Monsanto self-released these two promotional tunes on 78 rpm. The first, a nervy yet bouncin' latin-tinged number is subtitled "music about a chemical"; the flip-side features the Monsanto March, a piece that seems like it might have been a rejected early soundtrack from an "on-hold" telephone call.

This record fits our previous entries of the dreamstates inherent in the aural representations we classify as "easy listening" as well as into our posts on corporate music/recordings.

GMO soundscape here....

AHMED MALEK (W/ FL4K0)- THE ELECTR1C TAPES (2017)

At some point later we listened to this jewel of Algerian ambient--an unfinished project from the late film composer recorded primarily in the late 1970s and early 80s. An expansive, meditative project of sounds both earthly and cosmic. Pure magic.

Dream it ...

(We obvs adore the historical afritronica resurgence: see Jagwa, Mergia, El Omari, Bebey)
R. MURRAY SCHAFER - THE VANC0UVER S0UNDSCAPE (1973)

We also played this today, adding to our sonic locations series. 'Unseen Sounds' and Acoustic Ecologies from the North American West coast ... the unyielding rhythms of nature, industry, commerce, socialization and celebration in full, beautiful splendor.

Dream it...

[Previous Soundsites: The Hudson River / New Hope, PA  / Vancouver, BC Glacier Bay, AK / Tropical Rainforest / American Fast Food Restaurants / American Offices, Ross Dependancy (Anarctica) / Junk Yards / Holland by Boat]

Friday 24 November 2017

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.
NECR0POLIS, AMPH1BIANS & REPTILES: THE MUSIC OF AD0LF WÖLFLI (1986)

Wölfli's pathetic and gruesome life, most of it spent institutionalized near Bern, Switzerland from 1895-1930, gave rise to a monumental outpouring of primatif drawings and text (over 25,000 pages). Much of this material was accompanied by cryptic graphic musical scores. Wölfli himself would practice his works on a paper trumpet.

His psychologist, Dr. Walter Morgenthaler, a former student and protegé of Freud, archived Wölfli's work and produced Madness and Art: The Life and Works of Adolf Wölfli in 1921. It was Rilke who gave the book to Freud...to which the doctor pronounced the artist a "Geisteskrank Künstler." As Freud realized, this work was a product of the modern mind in psychic turmoil, somehow explicable.

This compilation disc captures Wölfli's compositions via interpretations by Nurse W/ Wound, G. Revell, and DDAA (who feature the paper trumpet).
AD0LF WÖLFLI / BAUD0U1N DE J4ER - ANALYS1S OF MUS1CAL CRYPT0GRAMS / THE HE4VENLY LADDER (2011)

A second interpretation of Wölfli's compositions comes from the solo violin of B. De Jaer, who we earlier featured on the Korean gayageum here

More strange, sparse and lovely string music on which to drift away. Far away. 



J0HN Z0RN - THE INTERPRETATI0N OF DRE4MS (2017)

A new release by the maestro, wearing its Freudian influence assertively on its sleeve. Three works for two small ensembles. Gorgeous vibes by S. Hashimoto. Odes to the Freud of Luis Buñuel and Burroughs. Methods of free association, stream-of-consciousness: Freud's legacy on Surrealism.

Dreaming...


Wednesday 22 November 2017

JERRY G0LDSM1TH - FREUD (1977)

After a hiatus, we return today with a short series on Herr Freud, the progenitor of modern psychology and dream analysis. What follows is quick primer on the man and his ideas, with a few case studies and sonic points of reflection.

Goldsmith's 1962 score for John Huston's biopic (released on album in 1977) sets the scene: lulling harmonics and sweeping dissonances, harrowing stings and stark pizzicato. Eerie, suitably drenched in the sonics and symphonics of the psyche.

Get comfortable on the couch... our session begins here.
ANTH0NY ST0RR - FREUD: A VERY SH0RT INTRODUCT1ON (2001)

While tracks 24-27 (Download Part Two) provide the clearest summary of Freud's main theories on dreams, here are all 73 tracks from the 3-CD audiobook for context and general history.

In those 3-tracks / 10 minutes, Storr touches upon the key dream generators, as Freud saw them--wish-fulfillment, trauma, anxiety and shame--and the forces of repression, displacement, sublimation, symbolization that filter both the manifest and latent content of the dreams themselves. These ideas provide a loose frame and method through which this blog continues to ponder dreams, sound, music, and document. "Loose." Part One and Part Two.
S1GMUND FREUD / JUL1ANE KÖHLER - TRÄUME UND TRAUMDEUTUNG (Entdeckungen auf der Couch: CD01, 2006)

This recording of the foundational document of modern dream research--The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)--we are assured, offers both German speakers and non-speakers alike good fodder for drifting off. Consultation of the primary source, and its vast seas of commentary, is of course recommended during alert, waking hours.

Interpretive Dreaming...

This 11-CD series, produced on the occasion of Freud's 150th birthday, also features this Christoph Waltz reading of "The Moses of Michelanagelo" (1914), for those who enjoy the voice of this Django/Inglourious Basterds actor.
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.
SIGMUND FREUD / STEVEN CR0SSLEY - CIVILIZATION AND ITS D1SCONTENTS (2011)

Perhaps more important for our own purposes here at OWOD are Freud's late works, where he suggests the larger ideological underpinnings of psychology and hints at their reification in material life, as well as their psycho-social affects. The "dream-states" of "Discontents" (1930) are of course our illusions and delusions, our anxieties and irrational drives in the face of social constraint...the Subject under pressure.

For fellow Lovers of listening to works reading-aloud, here's the audiobook of James Strachey's 1961 translation. (To read along, the Strachey PDF.)

Lastly, because we can, we offer a PDF of the The Future of an Illusion (1927).
D4PHNE 0RAM - PR1VATE DREAMS AND PUBLIC N1GHTMARES (2011)

Test subject number two--a response to Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents"--comes in the form of this "reworked and reinterpreted" album built from the late Ms. Oram's vast archive of unreleased material. The pieces are both haunting and futuristic, a case study of internal, pensive gestures set against the more public sonic codes of electronica and soundtracks. The seams between ego and superego? The private/subjective in constant negotiation with the constraints of our external, civilizing forces? Maybe. Wicked album. 

Dream it...
LULLAB1ES & DREAM S0NGS (2010?)

We'll end today's posting where all dreaming begins, with sleep. Mississippi Records Tape Series (#51) presents 25 folk recordings from around the globe: tribal melodies, field recordings, folk songs and pop ditties. Yoko Ono, Vashti Bunyan, and Brigitte Fontaine are featured.

Spin this at bed-time.

Wednesday 26 July 2017

H0RR1BLE CH1LD - L'ÉTRANGE MR WH1NSTER (1976)

"To discourage sensible people" the cover states. A one-off project by Mr. J.P. Massiera under his Horrible Child moniker--a recording with a determinedly singular creative vision. Might best be described with references to radio plays or rock operas. Experiential sonics. Theatre for the ears.

I am often glad when I'm unable to understand lyrics and recorded voice due to language restrictions. Words too often overwhelm, and/or undermine the listening or dreaming session. Here, my workable French allows me the paranoid, tortured "libretto" which adds to the work, even at its most laughable and kitschy moments. This album should be commended for its humor as well as its innovative spirit. It should be remembered that the Old English word "dream" had little to with the idea of sleep-time visions, which was a later connotative accretion still under debate by etymologists and historians. Dremen: joy, rejoice, mirth, noisy merriment, music...

That being said, this is let us say a particularly dramatic kind of mirth music.

Saturday 22 July 2017

W1NDH4M H1LL REC0RDS SAMPLER '84

We last posted about easy listening. Contemporary music. Later, we ruminated about the personal roots of our weakness for soundscape, mood music, the unbearably saccharine, stilted, reserved or absurdly abstract. We fell asleep. We dreamed of our long-lost selves. Our long-lost selves were dreaming of something else.  

In some towns, cheaply-priced label Samplers would sometimes appear as the only album in the unfortunately-titled, if evocative, Contemporary section. Some of us went for it... three sampler samples today, squaring off in a smooth and mellow slapdown.

Elsewhere: M. Hedges, M. Isham, W. Ackerman, Shadowfax, G. Winston et al.



LATE IN THE 20th CENTURY - AN ELEKTRA/N0NESUCH NEW MUS1C SAMPLER (1987)

From new-age to new-music, the shock of the new introduced itself well here in a tastefully risque collection of so called new music from this short-lived conjunction label. With Kronos Quartet, World Saxophone Quartet, W. Horvitz, Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, S. Reich, Zorn, Varèse and others.

Elsewhen...


AN OR1GINAL VIEW OF INF1NITY - AN ECM SAMPLER (1995)

A mixture of ECM and ECM New Series, and a fair sonic convergence of the two previous sampler posts above. With M. Monk, K. Bjornstad, J. Garbarek, Hilliard Ens., A. Brahem, T. Rypal et al.

New Age, New Classical, New World... dreaming the new that was now.

Thursday 20 July 2017

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...
CHR1S P0TTER - THE DRE4MER IS THE DREAM (2017)

The dream theme continues to give us focal points of analysis and comparison. Speaking of easy listening, listenability, and the ingrained dream-worlds of music, we offer this piece of contemporary light-jazz schmaltz. The dreamer is indeed the dream. For this dreamer, the entirely forgettable music presented offers little in the way of psychic teleportation, dreamstate transportation, mood or nostaligia. What is this dream? Why are we posting it? The title--and album itself--are key reminders of our project at OWOD: however materially dreams structure our built environments, ideological systems or waking rituals, they remain ineffable--beyond grasp, individual, a primordial sludge at the foundation of self. Our dreams, ourselves.  Listen easy.

Friday 14 July 2017

DREAMERS CL0TH - A BAMB00 DREAM (2008)

Summer. The dreamer's cloth is perhaps the well-worn orange cotton t-shirt resting over your eyes as you lay on the grass, facing the sun. You're frying.

Our albums today capture this tone, a range of ingrained seasonal clichés: summer-picks, old favorites...sunbaked sonics, exotica, romance, heartbreak, nostalgia, laziness, guilty pleasure, music that feels like sweat-salt on the face or the breeze that revives and heals. For Summer 2017, the glare is intensified by a certain heat of cultural hellishness...once the forest fires and riots start, escapism becomes critical. And vital.

We start here, with a solar-infused EP-sized slice of tropical drone from one J. Fredriksen of Copenhagen.
THE BE4CH B0YS - ENDLESS SUMMER (1974)

Enough said...
PEAK1NG L1GHTS - THE F1FTH STATE OF CONSCI0USNESS (2017)

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



MILES DAV1S / MARCUS M1LLER - MUSIC FR0M S1ESTA (1987)

A solar-tinged, glaring soundtrack for drifting off in the late afternoon.

Dry heat...
TUCKER M4RT1NE - BR0KEN-HEARTED DR4G0NFL1ES (2004)

Subtitle: Insect Electronica from Southeast Asia

Comes with the note:
"Dragonflies, cicadas, and all other insects recorded in Thailand, Burma and Laos.... These recordings were not processed, the insects actually sound like this!"

(For more insect music, we have Cicada Dream Band by P. Oliveros and D. Rothenberg here)
J0NI M1TCHELL - THE H1SSING OF SUMMER LAWNS (1974)

This languid classic finds Mitchell at her peak. With this album, her innovative yet sometimes awkward extensions from rock-folk into jazz progressions and sonic abstractions are given shape with careful arrangement, restrained orchestral touches and an unflinching dedication to mood.

Dream it...
CYBE - TR0PISCH VERLANGEN (2017)

This Dutch fellow's compilation of analogue recordings and cassette releases from the 80s utilizes keyboards, bells, wooden percussion and field recordings. He had traveled through Asia--India, Thailand, Bali and Java--and then came up with these breezy works of exotica. A "tropical request": A dream of the east as much as a dream from the east. A delightful, orientalist summertime release.

Pure Tropisch...Soak in it.
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..."



Tuesday 20 June 2017

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 ...

Monday 19 June 2017

IR1S GARRELFS - BEDR00M SYMPH0N1ES (2014)

There's been a nasty stomach bug circulating. Many of us have spent the past days in bed with nausea, fevers, chills and bodily upheaval. We played music. Some was to relax, promote restfulness and healing. Other times we interrogated or ingested the subject of illness itself, seeking a homeopathic sonic cure. The albums that follow are a mere selection of some of our literally "sickest" albums we played.

Garrelf's strange little classical/experimental outing is as good a place to start as any: chilly/sweaty Lo-Fi studies for processed voice, raw sound-art ideas, the wonderful feelings of freedom and isolation that come with private bedroom sequestration. Fever-dreaming starts here.
NE1L Y0UNG - DEAD MAN OST (1996)

Pulsing hallucinogenic solo guitar: fuzz, reverb and feedback for those in-between states.

Dream it...
MENSTRUAL CH1NESE DRE4M - S/T (2005)

Music both for and of cramps, bed-spins, nausea and digestive mayhem. A one-off side project of the ever-prolific Mr. J. Ferraro, this drone and loop dreamstuff has the strength to both sooth and unsettle. Dreams of menstrual blood, some people believe, bring good fortune and jubilance to one's life. Menstrual dreams themselves, however, can feel like slow death. Either way, this album provides a churning, grinding, meditative and even ritualistic kind of salve.




JAMES PL0TK1N - THE J0Y OF D1SEASE (1996)

From Zorn's long deceased Avant imprint. Here, sickness, disease and altered states are referenced in this industrial, ravy, and new-beatish offering from the grindcore legend. With collaborations by R. Collins, M. Harris, and F. Triechler.

Dream this if you want...
DEMETR10 STRAT0S - METR0D0RA (1976)

Stratos pulls the human range of vocal techniques through a blackhole in this two-suite series of sound poetry studies and compositions. This, our ninth of twelve DIVerso posts, finds its perfect context for aural consumption in the series of illness-inspired posts we give you today, as the listener who downloads this gem will discover. There is some discomfort, a bit of pain, moments of respite, and ultimately a purge and cleansing of the Four Humors.

Restorative Dreaming...
S0UNDS OF MED1CINE - OPERATION-BODY SOUNDS (1955)

Field recordings from the operating room, sonic documents of medical malfunctions, and the a propos track "Sounds of the Bowels" which has been speaking to some of us in very intimate, personal ways.

Gurgle, dream, regurgitate ...
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.
STELV1O CIPRI4NI - INCUB0 SULLA C1TTÀ C0NTAM1NATA (1980)

A quick divertimento into Nightmares of the Contaminated City. A soundtrack that foregrounds both the spookiness of epidemic, and the horrible conditions of the cure. Some of this sounds most sickeningly like hospital waiting room music.


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...
MAM0RU FUJ1EDA - RAD1ATED FALL1NG (2009)

Some radiation treatment arrives in the form of two Fujieda compositions from 1980 and 1981--beautiful if perpetually degrading compositions that find wholeness and wellness through subtraction and purification.

Drm t...
MICHAEL NYM4N - DECAY MUS1C (1976)

Finding peace with our ailments.
SEAW0RTHY - SLEEP P4THS (2012)

Sleep loops of guitars, music boxes, ukeleles and electronics...a sonic lullaby to settle almost any stomach ailment. More dreamtime gorgeousness from the Sleepwell record label from Belgium. Get well soon!

Sleep paths from sickness...

Sunday 11 June 2017

JEAN-J4CQUES PERREY - PRÉLUDE AU S0MME1L (1958)

Often described as a key early progenitor of electronic and ambient sonics, Perrey's groundbreaking work comes to us as our earliest-known sleep-aid recording. Pressed by Institut Dormiphone, a French sleep research outfit, this album was created for use in hospitals and mental institutions. Featuring the Ondioline, some kind of vacuum based instrument, this album was specifically composed to induce alpha-wave drowsiness. Its lilting melodies and drone worked like a charm for this writer, who can attest to its abilities. A great addition to our sleep-aid collection: more here, here and here.

Dream it...