Album Review:
Daydream Society – Daze End
https://daydreamsociety.bandcamp.com/album/daze-end
(I managed to dislodge my fingers from my rear end and give this album a last few listens, so here's a fresh-cooked ramble/review for your perusal)
Listened to: 2 times in full on speakers, then 2-3 times on head phones while writing.
Spoiler warning: This album would prove to be much, much more my cup of tea than the previous one I reviewed. Noise/ambient elements are present here too – even with some spoken word to go along with it – but there’s so much more structure to these tracks, plus a significant amount of melodic, instrumental sections. Let’s jump into a track-by-track assessment of this piece of work.
01. Obsolescence
A garbled guitar introduces us to the theme of the song, then silence. Feedback noise bring us back in and plays this theme in unison with something I think is also a guitar. Various changes dive in and out, but the theme is always there in at least one sound channel no matter how many changes happen in other channels. I’d like it more if this melodic theme was more developed, less naïve sounding. An interesting change happens at the very end, but it isn’t given any time for further elaboration. I think something interesting could have been done here. The first track on End of Daze is probably my least favourite moment on the whole disc (I like using this word, even if there may well be no physical CD version of this). Take heart, because this means things are about to get a lot more interesting!
02. Existing as a Silent Film
This track is mainly carried by acoustic guitars playing a busy up and down moving theme almost continuously. This melody is a bit odd. It sounds upbeat, but is less of a pop hook and more of a prog-rock noodle, so to speak. Further adding to the esoteric feel of this track is the subtle dissonances introduced with some of the chord work at certain moments in the track. A soft synthesizer sine plays a variation on the theme near the end of the track and I think this closes things off with a nice sort of climax.
03. Nailed Down
Echoing voices, deliberately layered to sound disorienting. I’m not going to attempt deciphering everything these voices are saying here, or anywhere else on the album, but basically, there seems to be an ongoing theme of philosophical ruminations on existence. I don’t actually think this makes the album pretentious in the slightest. It’s an interesting think to talk about and you’re likely to appreciate this aspect of the album more with repeat listens, I’d expect.
The voices are eventually replaced with slowly cascading noise and various shimmering, electronic sounds. Not unpleasant sounding at all, despite it basically being a “wall-of-noise”. Ethereal, might be the proper word. A man speaks a few final lines, this time completely intelligibly and the track is over.
04.Ataxia
First thing I want to say about this one: Wow… what an ending! But let’s take it from the top: The track opens with phased sounds and crisp static bursts, but soon settles into a positively mesmerizing tapestry of swirling musical notes made with various instruments and sounds. The sounds slowly get replaced by more electronic ones and it only becomes more dazzling as it moves along. By the time it’s over, I’m actually a bit annoyed: I wanted more! Basically, this track is ****ing beautiful!
05.Happy Madman
Interesting. This track starts out sounding friendly enough, but the slightly off-key feel of the melody threatens to take us into less “nice” territory. Suddenly, a distorted guitar takes over and jams out a pretty demented, chopped up series of chords and the track stops rather suddenly at the 1:55 mark. A bit on the short side, but very cool none the less.
06. Last Daze
The guy speaking in this track sounds kind of sorrowful. Is this from some kind of poetry reading? I’m starting to be curious about where this stuff is coming from. Some pretty sublime keyboard lines layered with distorted guitar warbling makes the last two thirds of this track a pretty interesting ride. I’d say the general sound of this album has been very successfully put together so far. I’m certainly “in to” the feel of Daze End as an album. It goes incredibly well with the cover art too.
07. Paradox Nights
I’m in love with the melodies and general sound of this track. It reminds me somehow of System Shock for MS-Dos and I was always very taken with the synth melodies and interesting take on cyber-punk music (I know that’s not a genre, but there’s a certain feel that can be expressed in music that to me, subjectively, is right on the money in expressing what cyberpunk should feel like in musical form).
Check out 1:35 for some pretty awesome synth work. Generally, the marriage of uneasy disharmony and pretty melodies is a strength of the album, and this track in particular.
08. Brink
Big, enveloping, bright sounds. Then a pretty high pitched melody, which is soon accompanied by some subtly unhinged guitar backing. I love how the guitar sometimes lets out a very, very high pitched squeal. New sounds keep layering on and on, atop the same repeating theme. A strange, knocking sound comes in and sort of hammers away in the background. Come to think of it, there hasn’t been any drums on this album so far (and since I’ve listened to the whole thing several times, I know that’s true of the rest as well). Normally, I like music to move forward thematically and structurally more than this does, but the constant modification of how all these layers play together keeps thing interesting to the end.
09. If We Could Levitate
The sort of slightly naivistic, quite friendly, pleasant sounding melodies have been a recurring stylistic trait of this album so far. I’m curious as to whether that is a general trait of the work of this artist as a whole, or a deliberate choice for this album in particular.
I really like how the character of this track changes drastically around the 2:25 mark. The theme comes back after a while, this time in shape of distorted guitar notes, then a fade out.
10. Savior Signals
A guy is talking. Pretty grizzly stuff! Religious themes. Something that sounds unmistakably like wind blowing into a microphone for a second. When some actual music starts playing, I’m wondering if part of this track was made using Guitar Pro? I seem to recognize a sound used here. There is a lot of busy, layered arpeggios in this track. Dat piercing synth line at 3:56!
11. Fixated
As a stark contrast to the madness that was the previous track, Fixated starts out as a downright sombre piano piece. Carefully played too, with a fine dynamic touch. More layers creep in and the track eventually becomes more of a sound scape. I like how dark piano notes play in the background during the noisiest part. Again, the mix of sounds of differing character is very well handled. In some way, the piano work here reminds me of the Kate Bush album 50 Words for Snow.
12. Rising Time
Maybe a slightly too repetitive theme. If I’m reacting differently to what is essentially very much in style with most of the preceding material, it only has to do with how the theme is elaborated upon. Maybe it’s just a purely subjective reaction, but I kind of want something to change a bit more in this track. Maybe it’s that the melody could be said to have a sort of lullaby quality to it. Maybe it’s that it keeps returning to the same root note, so obviously and so frequently, that all of the layering doesn’t quite manage to disguise the simplicity of the central theme. Still, by no means a bad track.
13. When Our Winter Ends
Two minutes of soft, bright chords. A guy talks us out of the album. Something about snow and streams. I haven’t quite connected the dots, but it seems obvious to me that there’s some kind of theme going on throughout the album, as in these voice samples being very deliberately introduced in a certain order. This track isn’t much of a piece of music, but it works well as an album closer.
Allright, so that was Daze End by Daydream Society. If I may speak boldly, I’ll admit that I would still have liked something with more forward moving structures and melodic themes, but considering how little I tend to enjoy this kind of thing, I found this album to be quite appealing. So many of those stretches of layered melodies sound damn fine to my ears and distorted guitars are generally used to great effect throughout the album. The more trippy and busy it gets, the more I enjoy this album – and I really did enjoy it. Daydream Society is obviously an interesting project, so I’ll look forward to diving into more of this stuff in the future.
EDIT: Next up is what I presume is a single track by 1Blankmind. If anyone has a review request, I'll probably oblige. People whose projects I haven't touched will be first in line, if that becomes relevant.
Linear Mode
