Since the beginnings of music, composers and musicians have tried to emulate the feelings that arise from different subjects. Debussy wrote music to the sea, Stravinsky to the budding of spring, even the Flaming Lips recorded an album based upon a fictional world of pink robots and a hero named Yoshimi. For techno artist King Britt to create an album inspired by his dreams seems like a pretty good idea. Unlike with Debussy and Stravinsky, and certainly the Flaming Lips, there is nothing to relate to within the songs on the album. An organized beat pumps out in dance floor rhythms while an array of synths, vox's, and warbling distortions relay the messages that King Britt wishes to come across. And, he takes yet another gamble, naming each track simply dream 1, dream 2, dream 3, etc. and not illustrating exactly what takes place in the dream. Now, this is all shaky territory, but for a dance album, the hypnotic trance like aura of the record encapsulates a dream like experience.



From the first song of only forty seconds, you can only imagine what the rest of the album will produce. Not all songs are miniscule in length, but they are either short one or two minute interpretations or sprawling six to eight minute ones, and everything is in them. Once you start to decipher what the ticking rhythms, crawling bass lines, and hovering synths could be, you begin to establish some kind of navigation through the music. The music is that feeling of interpretation, what could mean what. One day, dream 10 could be a high speed train ride, and the next day it could be a chase through a forest. Dream 11 could either produce the sensation of sitting by the sea, or standing on a train careening through the wind.



The record does not only display abstractions of dreams, it also has some qualified dance tracks that would excite even the most banal club experience. Dream 14 sets the stage with a beat broken up in time and then slowly adds layer after layer of illustrious synth and rhythm until the whole thing has an undeniable dance quality. Dream 7 takes a different approach again but one can simply imagine the atmosphere that would overtake a dance floor if it was ever put on; the lights would dim to only a few roving spotlights and people would move slowly through their own ecstasy.



All in all, it's an interesting series of experiments and designs, even your willing to appreciate it. Electronic music may not be at the forefront of the music industry as it is, more-so, in Europe, but occasionally an interesting piece comes along that brings something new to an ever lessening genre. The Nova Dream Sequence may help incite dreaming into your waking mind, it may even get you dancing, but it's not going to change your view of electronic music if you don't already dig it.



Track Listing

1 Dream 1

2 Dream 2

3 Dream 3

4 Dream 4

5 Dream 5

6 Dream 6

7 Dream 7

8 Dream 8

9 Dream 9

10 Dream 10

11 Dream 11

12 Dream 12

13 Dream 13

14 Dream 14

15 Dream 15