LightDreams 1982 / Got Kinda Lost 2017
10,000 Dreams
Reaching high in lo-fi setting, cassette-only adventure gets a future.
Never the one to let the walls of a living room limit his imagination, this Canadian artist might have realized Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision on 1981’s "Islands In Space" yet there was more to it: a sequel which didn’t make it to vinyl and got lost in the mist of time. Basically a diptych, the echoes of the band’s debut serve as a gateway to the its follow-up’s ephemeral title epic whose guitar ripple pulls the listener in to envelop them in a psychedelic haze and delicately unravel in the finale with a return to the first album’s refrain, after an entire romantic mantra has evaporated.
There are magnificent ambience and blues to the bliss, though, and a whole universe in the 23-minute “In Memory Of Being Here” where soothing vocals dissolve in evocative, if scary, musique concrète and acoustic strum, while the countrified watercolor of “Everyone Grows And Grows” which infuses the flow with humor is an unexpected landscape enhancement. On this plateau, “Who Is The One” may ride a spiritual carousel, yet the upbeat splashes in “Visual Breakfast” somehow ruin its stereo-swirling delight before it’s blurred into nebula once again.
Capturing a hypnagogic hippie experience, “10,000 Dreams” will keep you mesmerized by its elusive and immersive magnetism: it’s a key to the future that never happened.
***2/3
