Wyatt Keusch - Object-Relations

Force Intel: 2011

Poor ol’ Wyatt probably never had a chance. Getting a release on Force Intel (an IDM sub-label established during Mille Plateaux’s 2010 re-launch) would already make getting exposure difficult, but just take a gander at his album here - it looks like a Mille Plateaux release at Mille Plateaux’s Mille Plateauxiest. A title of Object-Relations suggests weird, abstract math-glitch, and having each track simply called Object doesn’t help either, to say nothing of the egg-headed cover art. It’s the sort of release where even latter-era Autechre would give a cautious glance over.

Of course, Wyatt Keusch’s debut LP is hardly anything as I’ve described above – well, mostly. Opener Object 01 is exactly as I described above, but it’s only two minutes long, so don’t let it dissuade you from checking Object-Relations further. Thing to keep in mind with Force Intel is they clearly had old-school IDM in mind, even if the artists assembled adapted many production advances into their sounds. That means, hey, ambient techno! Real, honest-to-God melodies; delicate, haunting beauty lurking within technology’s cacophonous assault. I’m overselling, aren’t I?

Can’t deny I’ve given Mr. Keusch’s work much regard, Object-Relations only receiving a play by random chance before now. I knew I kept it for some reason after receiving the promo, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember why, and as mentioned, the cover art wasn’t terribly inviting for a memory refresh. After hearing those nice ambient tones in Object 07, spritely bells in Object 08, and general bliss-out of Object 09, I’d say this album’s worth a listen if you can find it at all.

The rest? Yah, there’s a bunch of tracks prior to those three. Most of it is the sort of glitchy stuff you’re expecting, though not unbearable like some IDM goes. I honestly can’t tell if Keusch has sped his rhythms up to ridiculous levels, or micro edited them into infinitesimal pieces – neither would surprise me. Yet no matter how frenetic his beats get, there’s still songcraft going on with each piece/track/object, clear structure and progression in how things play out. Not my thing, but if you’re into the braindancier side of IDM, you may like Object 02-06.

Bonus tracks? Can a digital album really have bonus tracks? I’ll grant in the context of the album, Object 10 and Object 11 don’t really fit. The former’s got some weird trip-hop vibe going for it, while the latter seems like it should be on Lodsb’s album full of glitchy, orchestral breakcore. I sure like this mess more than most of the other tunes on here though.

Speaking of messes, I better get this review wrapped up. Object-Relations isn’t that challenging of an album to get into, but man did it sap my inspiration to write about. I feel like I’m trying to describe advanced calculus principles using music notation, and failing miserably in the process. Probably didn’t help I pretty much failed Calculus 2 as it is.

Jliat - The Nature Of Nature

JLIAT: 1997

It's finally come to this. I thought I could avoid it, never have to deal with 'albums' like this one. I sure as Hell never buy them for myself, and it could easily have remained lost in the external harddrive storing all this music. I certainly have no obligation reviewing these, all those tracks merely back-ups for Electronic Music Guide 3.0, and not what I deem part of my official collection. I had to get curious though, didn't I? Now my media player has them lodged into My Library, and since these are technically full albums, I must honour my self-imposed rules. That's what I get for file maintenance.

Still, it wasn't so bad at first. Most of the one-track LPs I've reviewed thus far had at least something of interest about them, if not the actual music then the background behind it. And heck, if I can kick out a decent review of Robert Slapp's The Eternal OM, a one-hour piece of literally nothing but looping chants of “OM”, then surely I can review anything thrown at me. Come at me with your noodliest piece of wank, Ambient Bros!

Actually, I should hope for more compositions that 'noodle' about, which is simply a snarky way of saying music meanders, like a winding river on an open, flat countryside. Thing about those rivers (and musical pieces) is you're at least going somewhere with it, even if it's at a lethargic pace. The Nature Of Nature doesn't, at all. For seventy-two minutes! Play but a second's snippet worth, and it'll be near identical at every other point along its duration. I don’t mind drone ambient like this as shorter pieces, but taking it to these extreme lengths is a waste of time. The only segments I noticed this unending, overbearing piece of one-chord drone showing any variation were occasional subtle melodies looped every ten minutes (I think), but they're so buried beneath the dominating synths they're practically moot. Oh, and a bit late in, I heard some added static effects, which turned out to be a slightly loose wire near the head of my headphone cord.

That right there is the selling point for drone pieces like The Nature Of Nature: how each listen will be different, either from outside stimuli impacting the experience, or the brain’s attempt at pattern coercion out of something that has no conceivable form. Jliat (James Whitehead) is a self-professed disciple of John Cage’s ‘non-music’ approach to the craft, self-releasing several albums with titles like Still Life #5 (6 Types Of Silence), My Computer (go ahead, guess), and A Long Drone-Like Piece Of Music Made With Synthesizers, Samplers And Digital Delays Which Attempts In Its Minimalism To Be A Thing In Itself Without External Reference, Having An Analogue In Certain States Of Consciousness Where Being Is Experienced Also, among other artful pieces. If The Nature Of Nature’s anything to go by, his body work certainly is not for the faint of heart. Or easily distracted.

Neotropic - Mr. Brubaker's Strawberry Alarm Clock

Ntone: 1998

Probably the biggest takeaway I got from King Cannibal's super-splooge Ninja Tune lovefest Way Of The Ninja was the blunt reminder of how many artists I should check further music on. Not so much the main roster acts, though Mr. Tobin was definitely a priority. Nay, it was the folks on the sub-label Ntone that got my attention. Truthfully, Ntone was my first exposure to the Ninja squad, with the compilation showcase Tone Tales From Tomorrow Too. Quite an introduction, though hardly representative of what the parent label was all about, Ntone serving as the more leftfield outlet of Coldcut's extended crew.

One of the mainstays of Ntone was Neotropic, or Riz Maslen to the London bobbies (did I get the slang right?). Though not there at the very beginning, she stuck around until the label closed shop in 2001, even earning the honour of having its final two releases, the album La Prochaine Fois and single Sunflower Girl. So yeah, an Ntone institution, and a necessary starting point in checking out anything further from the label.

That said, I had little idea of what to expect going into Mr. Brubaker's Strawberry Alarm Clock (man, is that ever a British sounding title). I expected some broken beats and trippy jazz-hop, because even as a sub-label, the Ninja Tune association couldn't be overlooked. Would Ms. Maslen take weirdly bizarre paths though? Play things a little safer? Confound all expectations and go shoegaze? What even is the Neotropic stylee to begin with?

I certainly wasn't expecting an eleven-minute long titular 'opus' for this album. As Grand Openings go, it isn't that long, but compared to the rest of Mr. Brubaker's Strawberry Alarm Clock's tracks, it's ginormous, outpacing nearly every other cut by at least twice as much – only the illbeat trip-jazz-hop You're Grinding Me Down gets close, and even that's a 'mere' seven minutes long. As for Burbank’s Strawjelly Alarmist Watch, it’s got orchestral segments, thick dubby beats, saxophone bits, creepy tits, and at least three changes of course in its duration. Quite the ambitious bit of songcraft, ‘tis, one that’d be difficult to top elsewhere on the album.

Erm, she doesn’t, if I’m honest. Still, there’s still good music found here for those who can’t get enough of Ninja Tune’s take on trip-hop and all that rot, with quite a bit of variety within the downtempo sphere of sounds. Acid jazz (Gutted), nu-jazz (Insane Moon, Vacetious Blooms), abstract jazz (Cremation), ambient jazz (Saucer Song), ambient-ambient (Sideshow Man), and other assorted ill-bent stuff (Under Violent Objects, Beached, Apple Sauce, Vent). Oh, and a big beat track too (Ultra Freaky Orange), because 1998.

The only trouble with M.BSAC is it doesn’t feel like a cohesive album; rather, a gathering of assorted tracks and productions Neotropic made whenever the muse struck her. Fine and all if you don’t mind an erratic trip-hop excursion, but you’ll forgive this chap’s suffered expectation when an LP starts with something as aspiring as this one does.

Circular - Moon Pool

Ultimae Records: 2014

Circular was another act that got a bit lost in the Great Ultimae Artist Expansion of the late ‘00s. Already brimming with LPs from new-to-roster names like James Murray, I Awake, and Cell, the duo of Bjarte Andreassen and Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik (thank you, c+p!) made their debut to the label with Substans. It was a good album, but didn’t ignite much buzz when surrounded by much other high-class Ultimae music. I think the problem was part of its PR, quick to name-drop Circular’s musical influence as a selling point. Hey, having some sonic similarity to The Future Sound Of London’s not a bad thing, but when FSOL’s already releasing music of their own that same year (the Environments series, remember?), why not go to the source?

Even then, claiming Circular has much in common with ambient ethno-techno of the ‘90s is a hard sell within the current psy-chill scene. There’s been remarkable growth and evolution in the loosely tied genre, some of which Ultimae itself was instrumental in. Taking on an old-school leaning act may not sound all that appealing to folks eager for the cutting edge of chill-out stylee. This had to be on Circular’s mind in the half-decade since Substans: how to sound current while retaining the classic vibe they enjoy so much. I mean, the Ultimae Mixdown™ can only get you so far.

Thus we come to Moon Pool, and by George, Jove, and Jolly The Green Giant, I think Andreassen and Gjelsvik figured it out. Opener Lunokhod (named after the ‘70s Soviet Lunar rover missions) feels like an encapsulation of all the classy things one may find in ethno-chill, new and old. There’s Balearic samples (chants, acoustic guitars, the sea washing ashore), expansive pads enveloping you in an ethereal embrace, chirpy backing synths providing subtle rhythmic build before revealing thick, dubby beats in the back-half, and just being utterly lush on the ears. Not much else on Moon Pool quite packs in that much of a perfect blend, but considering Lunokhod’s the longest track here (thirteen-plus minutes), it’s not surprising it comes off like a centerpiece of this album, point man status notwithstanding.

While Lunokhod may be the highlight out of the moon gate, the rest of the album more than holds its own. There’s pure ambient bliss-outs (Selenic Light, Meteorites), mildly uptempo acid-chill (Ashlands, 3 Moons, the latter of which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Solar Fields LP either), a touch of the world-beat (Synchronous), and your obligatory darker Aes Dana collaboration (Imbrium). Tying it all together is a loose theme built around, well, Luna, giving this album a strong sense of journey from start to finish, no track deemed a pass, much less stand alone (beside Lunokhod at least).

Circular may not have been a sexy purchase when they first joined Ultimae, yet I see no reason to skip out on Moon Pool here. It’s as class an Ultimae LP as anything from the main players of the label.

Troum - Mare Idiophonika

Tourette Records: 2010

See, this is the sort of release I expect from the dark ambient scene. Troum are comprised of former members of Maeror Tri, one of the few 'deep underground' industrial bands of the early '90s that could count on being name-dropped as highly influential and all that rot. That they would start doing experimental ambient stuff was inevitable, almost a requirement for any self-respecting industrialist really. The two members of Troum even have quirky cyberpunk names, Glit[S]ch and Baraka[H] (I'm guessing the “h” is silent). Throw in a multitude of LPs released in the past fifteen years, and you've got a dark ambient duo that's built up quite the legacy for themselves, on par with luminaries like Nurse With Wound and Merzbow. Good for them. Shame I didn't stumbled upon a stronger album than this as my first impression of Troum. Maybe a re-recording of a live performance wasn't the best point to dive in with this duo.

It has a great start, mind you, working a methodical, droning build with plenty of tasty dark ambient textures. Funny enough, it even opens with heavily-echoed bass guitar, which gave me pause in thinking I’d accidentally replayed In The Mist’s Lost. But nay, whereas van Cauter’s music retained his sludgy doom metal roots, The Self-Playing Ocean (the only titled composition on Mare Idiophonika) is clearly a product of the industrial scene, a sense of suffocating technology reverberating through your earholes as bleak, dystopian pads create a choking atmosphere of anxiety and dread. As I also mentioned in the Lost review, dark ambient is best when momentum is suggested, that the composers aren’t spinning their sonic wheels under the pretence of ‘minimalism for artistic sake’. Troum work an excellent build here, The Self-Playing Ocean creating a sense of musical pressure that begs for release of some sort.

That Troum would add a rhythm to the track makes sense, as it’s a logical step in maintaining The Self-Playing Ocean’s urgency. I just wish they’d have chosen one less bland than the repetitive tribal loop they settled on. What briefly did add an interesting new element soon turned into a distraction from all the weird, discordant sound drones going on, and lingers in a lo-o-o-ong fade out for well past any point of usefulness (about fifteen minutes worth). Once gone, you realize it didn’t add much of anything to The Self-Playing Ocean, the track working just as fine had the music remained solely on its dronier aspects.

Its retreat also marks an abrupt change for the forty-five minute long piece, settling into orchestral swells and such. Not a bad way to end on, but after the tedious middle portion, I've kind of zoned out on Mare Idiophonika, and not in the good way ambient music does – your mileage may vary. For me, the brief bit of blissy music tacked onto the end of the CD as a secret song was more enjoyable than most of The Self-Playing Ocean. No lame tribal loops!

In The Mist - Lost

Nulll: 2002

Did you know the death metal scene has a vibrant dark ambient sub-scene? Well, sure, you probably did, o' purveyor of Viking thrash and demon-doom grindcore, but what of the rest of you? Dark ambient mostly found its footing within abstract industrialists and fans of the Alien movies at a time when having any sort of synth work in your metal music was considered stupid and gay (Van Halen exempt, apparently). Yet as the '90s took form and production in metal albums grew more ambitious, creepy ambient textures made good sense for an interlude or two. Some musicians grew inspired enough to make whole albums of the stuff, creating tidy side careers within the dark ambient scene at large. One of the more ambitious chaps in this field is Stijn van Cauter.

Not content to simply make an album or three, the Belgian metaller established his own label, Nulll, using it as a platform to release a multitude of LPs under a multitude of project aliases. Doom metal act Until Death Overtakes Me was the big one, but he also released dark ambient and experimental works as Fall Of The Grey-Winged One, Dreams Of Dying Stars, Tear Your Soul Apart, and Dance Nihil (among other cheery names), most of which were one-off works of CDr-length single track music. Oh, and In The Mist as well.

Lost got a bit more buzz than van Cauter’s other projects for its comparatively different approach to dark ambient – more grey atmosphere, less doom and gloom here. I’ll buy that, this seventy-minute long piece of drone remarkably immersive considering there’s very little going on. Over ninety percent of its runtime is dominated by an overbearing bass tone fed with overlapping reverb and echo effect. Additional sounds like heavily-echoed guitar plucks and fret rides occasionally pierce the murk, but its long stretches between those islands of musical respite.

Interestingly, Lost starts with these guitar effects, as though the fog of drone has yet to settle in; conversely, the overbearing tone dissipates by track’s end, allowing an actual bass melody to emerge for the remainder five or so minutes. Lost may be drone ambient at its near-droniest, but damn if van Cauter didn’t expertly capture the mood of being surrounded and trapped by bleak, suffocating mist here. Those few melodic bits that do emerge are like the glimpses of scenery one might spot when searching for landmarks to find their bearings, only for van Cauter to cruelly snatch them away as the haze reasserts its sonic dominance on you.

As a piece of drone ambient, Lost’s pretty cool, one of the better examples of the genre I’ve heard in a while. For a form of music that seems ridiculously easy to craft, it’s also remarkably difficult to retain a listener for, many producers forgetting that lengthy drone does need a sense of progression, of change throughout. Within the context of In The Mist, van Cauter finds just the right balance of deep atmosphere and suggestive narrative.

U-God - The Keynote Speaker

Soul Temple Entertainment: 2013

I'm gonna' sound like a total Wu-Tang hipster here, but I was into U-God before it was cool. While I understand why fans of the Clan wouldn't rank Mr. Hawkins' MC skills as high as the other members, I've never understood the derision he's received. As the obligatory baritone of a full Clan of talent, he's always fit whatever hook or verse handed to him, with a be-boppin' style that sounds great to my white-ass ears. Seriously, just listen to him ride any beat, and realize he's just as talented as the rest of the Wu crew, even if it's within a specific role.

Right, I wasn’t so into him that I copped every release of his (okay, none), but when folks started hyping up his third album, Dopium, I nodded, figuring the general hip-hop community was finally cluing into what I long suspected: U-God is a great MC, and simply had a bad run of record label luck in launching a solo career. Interest in how he was to follow Dopium grew, heads wondering if that album was a fluke or if ol’ Golden Arms was finally on firm ground, ready to cement his legacy within the hip-hop canon. Enter The Keynote Speaker.

This is the sort of Wu-Tang solo album most fans anticipate, a member spotlight with guest verses from the Clan fam’ for followers of those particular MCs – The RZA getting an ‘Executive Producer’ credit doesn’t hurt either, even contributing a few beats for U-God to spit over (discordant soul in the ‘bad day in the life’ tale Room Keep Spinning; street noir in Get Mine; ?? southern screw in Be Right There?). One DJ Homicide provides the bulk of the beats though, mostly feeding vintage Eastcoast funk-n-soul loops that U-God has no problem riding. In fact, most of The Keynote Speaker feels like a mid-‘90s throwback, little in the way of modern hip-hop finding its way here. The aforementioned Be Right There aside, only Stars (epic trance synths!) and Golden Arms (trap!) come off contemporary, and I’m surprised I like these tunes as much as I do (strictly old-school, this white boy be). U-God himself sounds in fine form, and while his lyrical topics don’t stray far from his comfort zone (a couple street stories; “ya’ll doubted me, here’s proof of my skills”; etc.), it’s as I expected anyway. Baby Huey’s found his groove, so why ruin a good thing?

If you’re still uncertain whether to spring for a U-God album, The Keynote Speaker includes a bonus disc of Soul Temple Entertainment affiliated Wu material (it’s the label where many Clan members have found new homes on). There’s a couple cuts from Ghostface’s critically hailed Twelve Ways To Die album, Wu-Tang joints from RZA’s movie The Man With The Iron Fists, and a Shaolin Soul Selection mash-up from RZA himself, where he spotlights the original records he nicked many of his classic samples from. Almost worth the price of admission alone right there, mang!

Adham Shaikh - Journey To The Sun

Instinct Ambient/Interchill Records: 1995/2006

Yet another name checked off on my “Must Have In Respectable Music Collection” list. Fortunately, I haven't been quite so neglectful in gathering a few odds tunes of Adham Shaikh's discography as I was with poor ol' Amon, Shaikh often cropping up on ethnically inspired ambient compilations. I've even seen him play out a number of times at Shambhala Music Festival, the chap practically a fixture at the psy/chill/groove stage. As his base of operations is local, I've simply taken him for granted over the years, a musician I could dive into whenever I felt like it. And now I feel like it, so here we are. How about you?

Shaikh got his break with this album Journey To The Sun, originally released on Instinct’s short-lived, seminal ambient sub-label (called, um, Instinct Ambient). I won’t deny feeling a little smug going into this one, figuring the hype surrounding this LP was due to the usual scarcity of mid-‘90s ambient (though Interchill did re-issue it in the mid-‘00s). I mean, I’ve heard lots of ambient music. No, like lots of ambient music. Pre-ambient music, post-ambient music, nu-ambient music, and that. Spacey ambient, silky ambient, and sulky ambient; drone ambient, dark ambient, and dank ambient. Noodly ambient, wibbly ambient, whispy ambient, wanky ambient, meditative ambient, snoozing ambient, Ambien ambient. I’ve heard ambient in sets, I’ve heard ambient under stars; I’ve heard ambient on a walk, I’ve heard ambient engaged in talk. There just isn’t any way I can be surprised by this genre.

And now here’s Journey To The Sun, surprising me with something new and interesting. Damn.

The basic ingredients here are well-worn elements of the genre: calming synth tones, dub effects creating vast sonic space, sparse percussion, a little Indian-themed spice. The way Shaikh weaves them into play though, is simply haunting, a feeling of floating out of body, spirit free of form. I wouldn’t blame you for having doubts, this sounding like astral projection malarkey, but when I listen to Emergence, Zero G, and the titular cut, it’s like I’ve been unshackled from my Earthly prison, left to roam space as I wish. There’s plenty of other music that has this affect on me, true, but little that’s done it so immediate and completely as here. It’s awesome!

Things aren’t all soul-space-surfing on Journey To The Sun though, other tracks finding ways to find their chakra flow. Infinite Emanation has a mild world beat thing going for it, dubby ambient groover Liquid Evolution wouldn’t sound out of place on an Orb LP (especially at sixteen-plus minutes in length), and Ethereal Ion gives us a taste of ol’ Adham’s ‘70s krautrock influences. Throw in simple sonic doodles as interludes between the centrepieces, and you’ve yourself an ambient classic.

Seriously, if you’ve even the slightest interest in this genre of music, get on Journey To The Sun. I feel like a right idiot for having bypassed it this long. Gotta’ stop taking these albums for granted.

Oliver Lieb - Inside Voices

Psychonavigation Records: 2014

Remarkably, astoundingly, and even bizarrely, this is the first full-length album Oliver Lieb has ever released under his own name. In a music career that’s spanned twenty-five years, the closest he ever got was the relatively unknown 1993 “O. Lieb” LP Constellation on Recycle Or Die – it was re-released under his full name, but digital-only, making it a retroactive example. Thus, Inside Voices remains the the first proper album gracing Lieb’s full name. Psychonavigation Records must have a lot of clout to have convinced him to do so.

This is also Lieb’s first proper album of new material since The Hive as L.S.G. (no, The Unreleased Album doesn’t count – it’s ‘unreleased’), though he’s put out plenty of singles under various aliases in the decade-plus since. As such, long-time fans (*cough*) were abuzz at what ol’ Oliver would cook up for this curious ambient label from Dublin.

Well, ambient obviously. The initial comparison will fall upon Into Deep, but Inside Voices is far more subdued and minimalist than that L.S.G. album. For one thing, beats are practically non-existent here, occasional bass pulses and shuffly clicks from deep space about all we hear on that end. What rhythmic lines that do emerge are carried by backing melodic synths – not exactly arps, but tracks like Surface Tension, Dreamfields and Self-Aware Universe feature slight hooks with building momentum behind them. Mostly though, we’re dealing with lengthy sweeping pads, spacious sounds drenched with echoes and reverb, and minor-key chord progressions when melody does take centre-stage.

For anyone well-versed in Lieb’s discography, Inside Voices will sound overly familiar. Though he isn’t outright recycling prior music, there is a sense he’s playing things safe here, using many trusty synths and melodic constructs heard before. No doubt, it’s a different approach to his tropes, focusing on the sonic space between his recognizable techniques, yet I can’t help feel some disappointment in not hearing much in the way of new sounds. It’s a fresh album, with a fresh start (new ‘alias’!), on a fresh label (that’s been around for over a decade), so why not offer us fresh synths or fresh soundscapes? I mean, the Solieb stuff may have been trendy as all Hell, but at least it was different, something new in Lieb’s discography.

Of course, this is just my quibble, extra expectation placed upon a producer that doesn’t have anything left to prove. Even if Inside Voices isn’t treading waters far from shores since wandered, ol’ Oliver’s sound remains uniquely his – you won’t find an ambient album full of spacey synths and trancey chord progressions quite like this one, since no one’s come close to Lieb’s style of song craft. For any long-time fan of the chap from Frankfurt, that’s more than enough reason to pick up Inside Voices, especially with new LPs from Lieb growing ever more few and far between. Hey, maybe this’ll spark his creativity some more, productions and releases soon outpacing his blistering early ‘90s heyday. Hail Psychonavigation Records if so!

The Orb - The Dream

Six Degrees: 2007

Now here’s a strange parallel: The Orb and The Simpsons. Both emerged at the same time (1989), had a critically and commercially heralded run for their first seven or eight years of existence, and then began a steady decline of importance as the current millennium took hold. Those who stuck around for new music/episodes insist things aren’t that bad, but even the hold-outs won’t deny the quality of product significantly dipped compared to the Early Years. There was even a minor, resurgent uptick in interest for both camps in the mid-‘00s, each finding a way to reignite discourse in their respective brands (The Simpsons Movie / The Orb releasing an album on trendy chill label Kompact). Of course, this has little to do with The Dream, but given the recent rash of Simpsons related topics flooding the internet, I couldn’t help but notice this while glancing back on The Orb’s discography.

The '00s were a weird time for the project fronted by Dr. Alex Paterson, drifting from label to label, seemingly aimless in their endeavors and growing ever more irrelevant as newer downbeat musics got all the press and plaudits. Perhaps growing forlorn for the good ol' days, the Doc' often reunited with his former Orb mates, or maybe his original posse would come a-callin' for some studio sessions. The Dream sees a return of Martin Glover (aka: Youth; aka: Killing Joke; aka: Dub Trees; aka: New World Orchestra; aka:...) for a full-length collaboration. Hey, that don't sound so bad, Youth quite instrumental in crafting The Orb's dubbier moments in the early days.

And yeah, The Dream delivers on those fronts, tracks like DDD (Dirty Disco Dub), Lost & Found, and High Noon tapping into all those tasty reggae-vibe jams that turned Perpetual Dawn into a classic (not to mention making ‘ambient dub’ a thing in the early ‘90s). But this is (was) the modern times, mang, and psy dub’s the fresh hotness where this sort of music’s concerned. Good thing Glover kept his ear to that ground, then, as The Dream has several takes on the genre Shpongle made popular. Gander at The Truth Is… (ethereal gospel!), Mother Nature (Middle-East riddims!), Katskills (trippy-dippy, hippies!), and Codes (rasta space-men!).

This being latter-era (re: non-Weston) Orb though, the productions aren’t ultra-dense sonic-soups, at times sounding shamelessly aiming for a little radio play (oh hi, A Beautiful Day). Also, the only thing that keeps The Dream from being a full-on Youth album is frequent use of quirky musical and dialog samples, often played through those Orb filters that’s practically a trademark of the project (heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if Doc’ Pat’ did trademark the technique) - par for the course where many Orb LPs are concerned.

Of course, the big question is how The Dream stacks against the classics. Take a gander at closer Orbisonia for your answer. Though not representative of The Dream as a whole, I challenge you to resist the feelings of warm Orb nostalgia on that one.