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.

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.

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.

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..."