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In everyday life we are continually tasked with imagining our way into the brain of the people we encounter. Throughout the realm of Ambient Music this responsibility is much easier to fulfill, as it seems that the mind of the composer is so easily available and hovering in the very air around us. The anthology The Sound of Dreams (67:20) offers 13 aural encounters with an intriguing variety of innovative human intelligences. Collected under the purview of Australia's Inspired by Breathing label the arrangement, energy and direction of each entry varies delightfully across many moods, styles and designs. What unifies this compilation is the unclaimed region from which this group draws their inspiration. While the domain of the dreamer is indeed a location where we all speak the same language, the compositions on this album mean to find their full effect in that rare mental state in-between wakefulness and sleep. This pre-dream condition is common to the human experience, but seldom appreciated by the slumbersome. We often miss the opportunity to discover new truths by spending too little time in this bewildering zone of partial consciousness. Charging the hidden activity of thought with a forward motion each contributor found on The Sound of Dreams provides a surreal drift across a dreamy and distinctive terrain. Where a coiled surge nests inside the long lines of unwinding percussion passages, further in we feel the slow light and heat of the creative current. Playing out in our heads the pleasure of discovery winds down into slow motion shifts of textural contrasts and foggy atmospheres. Betwixt and between the tone poems, electronics, beats and grooves, somewhere in the art and craft of the music we encounter the human signal - including that of: M G Barnes, Henry Bath, Call the Doctor, clint.E, Darraday, Benn DeMole, Billy Elly, FΞIJOΛ, Miles Lee, Margee, Misolt, Bohdan Stupak and Trem 77. Proclaiming that the power of this music is greater than that of the individual maker The Sound of Dreams is the rare find that combines such disparate works and personalities into something truly greater than the sum of its parts.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 26 February 2026 |
