Forty Minutes Of Dreams

While searching through my music folders and files recently I was struck by the number of songs I had that have the word 'dream' or 'dreams' in the title. A rich source of songwriting inspiration. They say hearing about other people's dreams is really boring but I don't think that's always they case. My own dreams have become really vivid and at times quite disturbing in the three years since Isaac died (and also since I started taking statins for high cholesterol a year and a half ago). Waking up having dreamed of Isaac, him being there and talking to me, is always a startling way to start the day (or the middle of the night). It takes a moment for me to realise it was a dream and that he's not there. Sometimes that half asleep- half awake state can be really pleasant and attempting to go back to sleep to go back into a nice dream is something that I'm sure lots of us do. 

Whatever the reason for dreaming, the brain/ consciousness sifting through stuff and pulling things from the dim and distant past into our sleeping state along with bizarre and random, surreal situations, is a rich vein of inspiration for songwriters- both musically and lyrically. Ambient music often seems like an attempt to make music that can soundtrack dreams. The blur and fuzz of shoegaze and psychedelia likewise. As all this percolated through my head on the road coming home from work one evening last week it seemed that a dreams mix was in order. 

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

• Kevin McCormick & David Horridge: Glass Dream
• Kim Gordon: Dream Dollar
• Spatial Awareness: Dream Food (SA Dub)
• Suicide: Dream Baby Dream (Single Version)
• Lunar Dunes: Pharaoh's Dream
• Ride: Dreams Burn Down
• Mark Peters: Red Sunset Dreams
• Sheer: Mezcal Dream
• Spirea X: Chlorine Dream
• Blade Runner Soundtrack: Deckard's Dream

Kevin McCormick is a Mancunian guitarist who released several albums of minimal instrumental music in the early 80s. He met bassist David Horridge in the late 70s and in 1982 they recorded Light Patterns, a minimal, gently psychedelic/ ambient album. Largely ignored, the album and others by Kevin were re- released in 2021. Last year Kevin released a new album- Passing Clouds- which is lovely and can be found at Bandcamp. 

Kim Gordon's solo album from last year, The Collective, passed me by a bit but it's a powerful piece of work, a jolt of electricity, hip hop drums, noise and Kim's NY blank cool. 

Spatial Awareness released Dream Food as an EP last year, an electronic trippy delight with this dub as a dreamy counterpoint. 

Suicide's Dream Baby Dream is one of those songs, an all timer. It came out as a single in 1979, a repetitive synth, drum machine and vocal blur of brilliance, a song lost in its own state of warm, blissful ignorance, the synth patterns circling endlessly. A track that could be loped for an hour and not outstay its welcome. 

Lunar Dunes' Galaxsea originally came out in 2011, post- jazz, post- punk, dubby global tracks 'for truth seekers and interplanetary vacationers'. The band included former members of Cornershop and Transglobal Underground and took the 1960s and 70s West German bands as their inspiration. Pharoah's Dream is at the centre of Galaxsea and rattles along in a cosmische and future jazz way.

Dreams Burn Down was on Ride's 1990 debut album Nowhere, a shoegaze classic, crunching FX guitars, slow motion drums and typically youthful lyrics about lost or unrequited love. Live Dreams Burn Down is massive, a wall of sound and sensation. 

Mark Peters is a guitarist from Wigan. His solo albums, 2017's Innerland and 2022's Red Sunset Dreams, are big Bagging Area favourites. The title track of the second is a rippling ambient instrumental, the wide open spaces of the American West crossed with north west England psychedelia. 

Sheer is Sheer Taft who in 1990 made one of the era's best wobbly Balearic dance records, the mighty Cascades. In 2022 Sheer Taft, now residing in Spain rather than Glasgow, made a follow up, an album called ...And Then There Were Four, a Spaghetti Western album with Andrew Innes and the late Martin Duffy from Primal Scream on board.

Jim Beattie was a founder member of Primal Scream, leaving to form Spirea X who released an album in 1991, Fireblade Skies. The debut release was a single the year before, Chlorine Dream, guitars from The Byrds, attitude from Glasgow, drums and vocals from 1990. 

An expanded, full length version of the Blade Runner soundtrack, The Esper Edition, was unofficially released and has done the rounds as a bootleg for years. The film deals with all sorts of themes dreams being one of them. Deckard's Dream is one minute and ten seconds of Vangelis/ ambient sound. In the film Deckard dreams of a unicorn, the meaning of which has been argued about since the film's release in 1982. 

Nocturnal Homecoming

Stourbridge producer Dirt Bogarde has made some of my favourite electronic/ acid house tracks of the last couple of years- his tracks Heavy Blotter and Backroom Sunrise have both lit up my life and listening sounds along with several others. Earlier this year Dirt released an album called Love, Sweat And Beers, an eight track debut packed with tunes and moments and an album that is in part a love letter to his hometown and a pub, The Mitre, that played a key role in the Stourbridge music scene n the mid- to- late 80s. Get the album here, priced at £0 or pay what you want. 

Today sees the release of Come Home, another slice of tip top dark disco/ acid house, nine minutes of enthralling and pulsating synths and drum machines (and not a cover of the James song by the way). The long intro raises the tension, drums eventually kicking in at one minute forty, a mid- paced, throbbing dancefloor monster, synapse twisting toplines and after four minutes a mashed, filtered, backwards vocal that has the bass and FX wrapping themselves around it coming to a close with a lovely drawn out ending. All in all, a hypnotising and transportative way to spend ten minutes. Dirt Bogarde's Bandcamp page is here and Come Home will be there from today. 

Also out today is a new EP from Spatial Awareness, which complements Come Home nicely. I posted the previous Spatial Awareness release in the summer, Dream Food which came with a lovely dubbed out remix. The new one, Nocturne, is yet more dark electronic fun, seven minutes of the stuff, with hissing hi hats and a bouncing bassline. At a minute in, the tom toms roll in. There's a breakdown, a wait, the tension rising, and then everything thumping back in. You should be able to find it here.

As with Dream Food, there's a dub version, the Nocturne Spatial Awareness Dub which adds some space and a slightly slower tempo but keeps the intensity and dark delight in place, shifting up a gear half way in a way that might wear out patches of the carpet at house parties. 

An Hour At Tak Tent

Tak Tent Radio is a Scottish based internet radio station that broadcasts all manner of interesting, experimental, leftfield and niche shows by a variety of guests. I've contributed guests mixes for a few years now and last weekend the latest Bagging Area Tak Tent emission went out, my eleventh. You can listen to it at the Tak Tent website here or at Mixcloud here. It's a chilled out dubby/ ambient/ Balearic affair, mostly music released this year but with a vintage Andrew Weatherall and David Harrow track thrown in, their sole recording as Planet 4 Folk Quartet (for Warchild in 1995). 

• M- Paths: Emerge
• Planet 4 Folk Quartet: Message To Crommie
• Richard Norris: Pagan Dub
• Sewell & The Gong: Passing Oort Clouds (Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s Remix)
• Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s: Minus Shadows
• Psychederek: Hapi
• Spatial Awareness: Dream Food (SA Dub)
• Timothy J. Fairplay: Centurion Version
• Coyote: Every Forest Has A Shadow (Vanity Project Remix)
• KlangKollektor: Midnight Express
• Florecer: Hidden Thoughts

Dream Food Resistor

This came out last Friday, a superb slice of slinky, wonky dance floor action, Dream Food by Spatial Awareness. The title is apt- there are aspects of this track that do feel very dreamy, the warm disorientation of waking from an odd but pleasant dream, the distorted vocal playing off against the synth melody as the drums patter away in a 122 BPM sweet spot. Lovely stuff- there's a dub mix too, seven minutes of pared back, stripped down but equally tripped out music. 

Meanwhile over at Paisley Dark in Leeds, Shunt Voltage have released an EP of dark, dancefloor mutant acid house, a track called Resistor. 

There are remixes too, one from label boss John Payntor as Space Age Freak Out, a lovely chuggy one courtesy of Cosmikuro, a banger from Mindbender, and one by Adult DVD (possibly not an act to Google if you're on a work computer). Find them all here.