ALDERHOLMENS FUTURISTISKA “Nutid” (Do You Dream of Noise?)

 

The trio Alderholmens Futuristiska is rooted in the now, get me? That’s what Nutid means, anyway, “present,” like you gotta be there, you gotta be right there to get what’s going on. Well, everybody, I’m here, I’m right here, so I’m reporting live from life, on the unshakable linear bedrock of time. It’s super easy to tell where I am on that timeline. I’m at the exact point where everything is happening.

That’s gonna be so weird for you future readers.

LEHNBERG (it would be so awesome to have a single, all-caps name), Olle Oljud, and Slim Vic comprise Alderholmens Futuristiska, and they can create quite a racket. They can also create quite a calm, serene atmosphere too, don’t get me wrong – it’s the juxtaposition of these two things that make Nutid such a fascinating listen. The murk of their drift is punctuated by sonic detritus – spinning vortices, blinking lights, sinister undertows – and there may even be human moaning within the morass as well. But every second counts, no matter how long or drawn-out any of this material is. There is no past or future here, no time to dwell on anything or anticipate. The space is all there is, and the AF boys fill it.

So while the overall experience is one of innerspace synthesizer machination, don’t be dulled into thinking that’s all there is. AF is adept at peppering the tones with noisy accoutrement, never allowing any track to sink into its own murk. And that’s right on, right here, right now. Or anytime, who’s to say?

https://soundcloud.com/alderholmensfuturistiska

https://www.facebook.com/doyoudreamofnoise/

--Ryan

PKCT “Арха́нгельск” (Do You Dream of Noise?)

Арха́нгельск is transliterated as Arkhangelsk, “Archangel,” and Арха́нгельск, is dedicated to the people who live there. Arkhangelsk is located on the White Sea in northwestern Russia. That is the extent of my knowledge of the locale.

 

And yet … Арха́нгельск is exactly as I expect it to be.

 

It’s not super warm up there, and PKCT doesn’t veer from that vibe at all, piping in a chilly ambient drone that’s as lonely as it is serene. Imagine the sea cloaked in fog, solitary vessels plying its waters on shipping or naval routes, quiet, calm, restrained. Imagine the weight of that solitude on the hardened mariners. Imagine the long night at the wheel.

 

When Арха́нгельск dissolves back and sound ceases, you’re left with the raw, exposed feelings surfaced during your time alone with it. PKCT crafts compositions like bodies of water, dense and immersive, full of mystery and wonder. It’s time to take a deep breath, hold it, and plunge into the waiting sea. Who knows what you’ll find out about yourself in there?  

 

https://www.facebook.com/doyoudreamofnoise/

 

--Ryan

ALPHA MOUND “Building Kit” (Do You Dream of Noise?)

Sweden-based Joakim Westlund records under the Alpha Mound moniker, and if we’re going to get a steady trickle of the kind of thing that he’s recorded on Building Kit, then I say let climate change have at those glaciers! Metaphorically, of course – I sort of want whatever’s blocking the Alpha Mound deluge to melt, just so I can selfishly have more of it. I don’t really want glaciers to melt – that wouldn’t be good for anybody.

 

What I do want is more Alpha Mound, please – Building Kit, released on Do You Dream of Noise?, is the perfect all-terrain soundtrack, the sonic backdrop to whatever you happen to be doing. Part post-rock, part drifting trance, part ambient mood adjuster, part synth pad knockout, and ALL AWESOME, Building Kit is like a windswept kosmische evening carrying the chill of those aforementioned glaciers all the way to the middle of your living room (or wherever you happen to listen to tapes). Doesn’t matter if you’re in Fiji, doesn’t matter if you’re in Mozambique, that cool breeze will cover you. You’ll be powerless to resist its charms.

 

A perfect fit on DYDON?, Building Kit hits all the right notes for a gentle yet bracing experience. Its quiet and contemplative façade is underscored by pulsing rhythms and overwhelmed often with washes of melody. It’s restrained yet colorful, a refreshing burst of sound masquerading as light and liquid, a dream dissolving in constant clouds. I feel like I could eat it, but I probably shouldn’t. Still, I can’t wait till that flood of Swedish delight hits me – and it better be soon!

 

https://alphamound.bandcamp.com/

 

https://www.facebook.com/doyoudreamofnoise/

 

--Ryan

SILENCE AND THE UNWINKING MINDS “Ephemeral” (Do You Dream of Noise?)

New Zealander Derek Pearson suggests unflinching focus with his project Silence and the Unwinking Minds, a solo endeavor even though it sounds like a band name, one of those “Paul Revere and the Raiders” type dealies. In pure silence the mind centers itself, “unwinking,” solely attentive to the object or task on which it’s directed its concentration. Derek Pearson in the same way hones in on a distinctive mood with Ephemeral, arching his eyebrow and staring into the heart of the void in order to pierce the darkness within.

 

But of course, as it usually does in these kinds of circumstances, the void stares back, and Derek Pearson is forced to forge an uneasy truce with all that internal unknown and proceed as best he can. He proceeds well, as Ephemeral pieces together a collection of low-key instrumental meditations, all falling easily within the post-rock/electronic/ambient hybrid idiom and taking cues from modern classical. Basically, you could easily find Ephemeral nestled in the Erased Tapes catalog, or, uh, the Do You Dream of Noise? catalog, into which it actually nestles. So, really, it’s exactly where it belongs.

 

Ephemeral suggests the fleeting nature of everything and packages that disillusion and impermanence into bite-sized nuggets of emotional engagement, forcing a reckoning between oneself and the motions of existence. Sit up, stand back, take notice! What elements of life are relegated to the edges or corners that should be foregrounded instead? Silence and the Unwinking Minds suggests that the path forward is hidden within the subtleties, but in plain sight – just pay attention, that’s all. It’s easy to pay attention to Ephemeral, and equally easy allow that focus to burn right down to the center of what matters.

 

https://silenceandtheunwinkingminds.bandcamp.com/

 

https://www.facebook.com/doyoudreamofnoise/

 

--Ryan

PERMAFROST AC “Allt som inte händer” C27 (Do You Dream of Noise?)

First one off the top of the new Do You Dream of Noise? pile is Permafrost AC’s Allt som inte händer, which Google handily translates as “Everything that does not happen.” This is fitting. Permafrost AC is the ambient folk project of Krister Mörtsell, who has his hand in everything DYDON does – he runs the place after all. The Swedish artist guides the direction of the label, and he is also at its vanguard. His flag flies proudly.

As Permafrost AC, Mörtsell drapes his guitar in mood, surrounding it with field recordings, synthesizer, mandolin, melodica – sometimes he just plays piano too. Sometimes, you know, you just have to play piano to get out the truth of whatever you’ve got going on inside you. And so he sits and plays, and we hear his playing, and we are gradually overcome by the way his playing interacts with the other elements, the space around him. We can hear it quietly and blissfully merge, and we are haunted by it, reminded of the actions we did not take or the opposite choices that we made. Mörtsell’s ghostly tracks pipe in from a multiverse location that isn’t our own. They make us long for how we could have done it better.

I want to listen to Allt som inte händer 100 times in a row, to let it seep into my bones and affect me constantly. I want it to offer bittersweet reflection as I sit bundled in front of a fire. I want to sleep, I want to cry, I want to drive, I want to hug. I hear these songs that remind me of good and better times, and I hear their gentle admonition in the disappointment they convey of the present. I can only promise these songs that I’ll try my best, my own best, and that I’ll strive to make the better choices. Gotta start somewhere, right? Hey, now I hear hope and encouragement in them too!

https://doyoudreamofnoise.bandcamp.com/album/allt-som-inte-h-nder

https://www.facebook.com/doyoudreamofnoise/

--Ryan

DET VILDA FÄLTET “4,75” (Do You Dream of Noise?)

Much like the rest of the DYDON tapes recently sent my way (and thanks for that, it’s been a pleasure!), 4,75 by Sweden’s Det Vilda Fältet blows across desolate landscapes and becomes one with its surroundings. And blows us all away in the process – their controlled, cinematic scores change the landscapes to soundscapes and internalize the vastness of natural beauty in a way that opens up the imagination and the mind to unforeseen possibilities. This is not weird – this is how life works around the DYDON offices, obviously located in the penthouse of some swanky Stockholm high rise. I sense an MO for the label, and Det Vilda Fältet follows it without hesitation. These Kranky-indebted slow burns unfurl as if they were sonic flora on our imaginary plain, blooming languidly under the harsh wilderness conditions. Hardy plants rustle in the breeze, and dust kicks up among the rocks and tumbleweed as the sun beats down upon the earth. Guitars make sounds and tones as if they were barely touched, effected remorselessly, organically growing from the ground as if they WERE the hardy plants they conjure. And maybe that’s the key to understanding the whole thing – the music grows, nourished, however scantily, from the ground and the air, the composers/players the water (we humans are practically 100% water after all), imbuing the sounds with life and purpose. Listeners like us scuttle from the shade of outcroppings to these plants that nurture us like desert beetles, mindless in our basic functions. And Det Vilda Fältet infiltrates and penetrates all like a holy ghost, sacralizing somehow with benevolent auditory beams. I’m too respectful to call this post rock, but it sure scratches that itch.

Det Vilda Fältet
Do You Dream of Noise? (site is in Swedish – beware!)

--Ryan Masteller

VOICE OF CANVAS “Semaphore EKKO” (Do You Dream of Noise?)

Cinematic: “of, relating to, suggestive of, or suitable for motion pictures or the filming of motion pictures”

A modus operandi becomes apparent for Voice of Canvas upon the very first note of the very first track – strike that, before the very first note of the very first track is even played. “Cinematic by Definition” serves both in title and execution as a mission statement, following which SEMAPHORE EKKO is easily understood and appreciated. Similar in scale and scope to film soundtracks that capture the grandeur of location (and it helps when the film is set in a location that becomes an integral part of and potentially overwhelms the action), SEMAPHORE EKKO almost fully becomes a film in itself, not even needing the crutch of a visual medium to establish its plot. It doesn’t hurt that the jcard is adorned with mountain, though. There’s a grandiosity about that snow-covered peak photographed in black and white, monolithic in its presence and conveying a heightened sense of the dramatic to any who view it. Turns out that Voice of Canvas is awfully good at soundtracking mountains.

It’s good that VoC is back, then – not much has emerged from the Swedish artist’s camp since 2010, and if that time was spent gestating the ideas that would become SEMAPHORE EKKO, then bravo. Not unlike Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannson, whose FORDLANDIA is simply breathtaking (and who I wish was providing the music to BLADE RUNNER 2049, but hey, if you wanted Vangelis, why bring in Jóhannson in the first place?), VoC, using all the studio tricks he can muster, creates a huge sound out of stillness. Part ambient, part electronic, solo but with an ear for enormity, SEMAPHORE sneaks up on you, drifting through “Cinematic by Definition” and emerging into the sort of trip hop excursion “Solid Venue (Edt).” It’s “I Call You,” though, that solidifies the whole endeavor, as VoC adds spaghetti western acoustic guitar and ratchets up the spectacle of expectation as if following a gunslinger who wanders into an arctic frontier town under an aurora borealis. From there the sparseness of keys and frigid atmosphere take over, and VoC never loses his vision as he progresses. The music halts these imaginary moments in time, allowing your mind to take the narrative over and build its own backstory and resolution. In this way, Voice of Canvas is maybe more of a cinematographer than a musician – maybe even a director, bringing together the pieces of his singular vision and presenting them as a unified whole.

Voice of Canvas
Do You Dream of Noise? (hope you can read Swedish)

--Ryan Masteller

SOPORUS “Windscale Pile No. 1” (Do You Dream of Noise?)

As I contemplated “Windscale Pile No. 1,” I marveled at the coincidence surrounding my receipt of this tape and its subsequent review. First, Do You Dream of Noise? must have some exclusive European rights, as this tape was “released under exclusive license” from Burnt Toast Vinyl, a Philadelphia-based label with whose releases I’ve had some interaction in the past. Second, Soporus, guitarist Matthew Stone and bassist William Stichter, performed together in the band Saxon Shore, a really good post rock band who I’ve sadly only encountered on compilations. (Really good compilations.) Saxon Shore has deep connections to the corridor from Central Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, a corridor I’ve often traversed during my time living just south of Harrisburg, driving the two hours or so to Philadelphia and back for shows, Phillies games, family visits, etc. It should come as no surprise, then, for anyone familiar with the area that Soporus has a deep connection to man’s attempt to harness nuclear power, as the infamous Three Mile Island lies not far from where I lived and Stone grew up. In fact, the track “A Clear View of Three Mile Island from on Top of Governor Dick Tower” is as obvious a paean to this topic as you can get, and it strikes me just right as I, myself, as a college-age whippersnapper, once climbed a water tower overlooking Harrisburg and TMI in the distance. As Stone, Schichter, and I approach forty (and damn you for dragging that out of me!), I’m overwhelmed by history and memory that such biographical details and the music of “Windscale Pile No. 1” conjure.

This ruminative attitude is reciprocal: Soporus plays it, I reflect on it, and thus the circle is complete. That’s what Soporus wants us to get out of this anyway – reflect upon the meditative passages of “Windscale,” get deep into the currents of the past and how we relate to it, and let the sonics break over us like waves on a shore, or drift upon us like snow on a path, or rise and ascend with us like luminous beings. Listening to “Windscale” is the equivalent of being back on top of that water tower in the dead of night, adventure ahead, life brimming, nothing to stop forward progress but our own flaws. And where we are now in relation to that matters only to your innermost secrets. Coincidence from past to present drives “Windscale,” reflects it, causes you to react to it, but meditating on that experience will unlock the secrets.

Let’s end, then, on a recap of the strange path this tape took to get to me: a label from Sweden sent this tape to me in Florida, but I probably lived no more than 20 miles from the band in a past life in Pennsylvania.

RIYL: Stars of the Lid

Soporus
Do You Dream of Noise? (again, this is in Swedish)

--Ryan Masteller

CLOUDSOUND “Axiom of Maria” C40 (Do You Dream of Noise?)

Don’t let it fool you, or maybe let it fool you because it doesn’t matter, but AXIOM OF MARIA was “recorded in a basement one night [in] September 2008.” The ambient passages, replete in their timelessness, are unconcerned that their recorded sound has sat unreleased for almost ten years. Lee Boyd, resident of Umeå, Sweden, and purveyor of fluere tapes, unabashedly revels in pastoral ambient, embracing the space and the distance conjured by its openness. No surprise, then, that he goes by cloudsound, not merely a cheeky transposition of the name of the online streaming platform but also a clue connecting the billowing sonics to a natural formation. Indeed, AXIOM OF MARIA encases you in its atmosphere, its gentle motion proceeding across your field of perception as it slowly shifts, taking different shapes and hues. At points calming as an altocumulus formation and at others shifting into the distant menace of cumulonimbus, AXIOM never breaks, never bursts, simply remains. “If clouds sounded like tape hiss,” goes the cloudsound self-descriptor, and there’s nothing better I can add to it. Get immersed and discover the cloudsound environment.

cloudsound

Do You Dream of Noise? (this is in Swedish, so good luck reading it.)

--Ryan Masteller

RITE OF FINAL HOURS “Rite of Final Hours” (Do You Dream Of Noise)

My first exposure to a tape from Do You Dream Of Noise (DYDON) turned out to be a record that perfectly complimented what I’ve been looking for recently. A collection of instruments and sounds on this album offer slowly moving dark noise music. Steady rhythmic elements on this album rise to become large walls of sound that never become too overbearing. The combination of chanting vocals, guitars, and synthesizers work well with each other and create haunting bodies of music. The moments of deep continuous layers of noise on this album are powerful, and follow a fixed tempo that feels hypnotizing. While minimal at times, the tracks on this album are really well put together and I appreciate the collage of voice, instruments, and heavy noise. 

http://dydon.blogspot.com/

--Lucas Martinez