Dreamland Recordings is a Melbourne based label, focusing on releasing sound works by lesser known artists, as they say. Their plan is ambitious, releasing a series of 10 recordings, including names such as Francisco Lopez and Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words. This is a review of the first five releases in the series.
# The first recording is done by Bokor, aka Zac Keller from Melbourne. Using a variety of instruments he creates deep dark ambient. Nothing new, but enjoyable for sure. His release on Dreamland Recordings consists of three pieces, two of them ending in a slowly build up noise outburst. the drop to the next track is quite big, which might take you out of the mood you just got into. A nice release but certainly not the best in this series.
# Number two in the series is by Mitre from the USA. Again Mitre proves that the US have a long and great tradition it seems when it comes to guitar drones. Mitre builds beautiful layered drones with his guitar, creating music that might be compared to big names such as Stars of the Lid and Windy _ Carl. A great release in this series, making me curious what else Scott Richardson is responsible for, and how his sound will expand in the future.
# The third release is by the hand of fm3, a collective of computer and classical artists based in Bejing. The collective, headed by Christiaan Virant, creates minimal soundscapes, using ancient Chinese folk music. The results are beautiful meditative tracks. Although their sound is minimal and clean, the overall feeling of this cd is a warm dreamy soundscape.
# Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words from Sweden did the fourth release in the series. ‘Dead letters’ is one of the many projects by Thomas Ekelund. In this project Ekelund recreates a mood out of source material he decomposes. The results are dark soundscapes, that have the typical electronic feel over them. Deep resonating sound layers are joined by electronic noises. Although interesting, the overal feeling of this recording is distant and cold.
# The 5th recording in the series is by Canadian sound experimentalist Aidan Baker. Aidan Baker is active in several projects, and lately his output has been strong. On this release Baker uses guitar as his main sound source so it seems, building slow drone pieces with a lot of depths. Baker deconstructs his sound source to recreate it into something new. Although it´s clear the soundsources have been decomposed, the overall sound of his songs is organic. Baker never looses touch with his source material.
This series turns out to be something quite interesting, and well worth checking out. If you like drones, but you are tired of what you already know, try some of these releases, you just might be surprised. Hopefully the second part of the 10 releases will be just as entertaining as the first 5 releases have been.
# DR001: bokor – The Field
# DR002: mitre – Sympathy for Agamemnon
# DR003: fm3 – ambience sinica
# DR004: Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words – This City is Dead or Dying
# DR005: Aidan Baker – Cicatrice