Matt Bartram – The Dreaming Invisible…….

“I had a sense of invisible, intangible powers at work, which caused this feeling of aerial stress” wrote Oliver Fox in 1962 regarding false awakenings, outsourced by Celia Green & Charles Mcreery in their ground-breaking “Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox Of Consciousness During Sleep” book. “I became expectant. Certainly something was about to happen”. Like tossing a pearl into the ocean, only for it to remain hovering, licked by the waves and resplendent against the sun, Matt Bartram’s “The Dreaming Invisible……. – seven full stops no less – and it’s works float softly, cosmically drifting, then falling into a bracket that might squeeze as Robin Guthrie’s “Everlasting” intrinsically dreamt by Slowdive’s searching instrumentals.

Certainly, there’s shoegaze history for Bartram, cutting his teeth prior with Air Formation, who split up in Spring 2011. These newer recordings, spawned from eight track improvisations, yet have very specific sizing and taste to their delivery. They’re all built on simple, layered riffs, whereby “Cadence”, this album’s standout track, comes off as exceedingly polished, a Mr Kipling meets Mr Sheen melody rendezvous. What can normally get lost in reverb blankets, edges upward to the clouds and creates dissolution comparisons to waking state dreams, returning to driver’s-seat consciousness.

Flashpoint two, “Healing”, employs angelic synthesizer chords to caress the guitars. Time feels cooped, and Bartram has the listener in the palm of his hand. “Illuminate”, meanwhile, takes too long to mutate, leaving you concerned when things will finish. When it does change, though, there’s a lavish drone to be had that sees the LP out well. From “Lucid Dreaming”, Oliver Fox’s story sums up the finale: Then, wishing to observe more closely the source of this mysterious light, I made an effort to overcome my strange disinclination to move. Instantly the light vanished and things were as usual. I was really awake now, with my head half raised from the pillow.”

“The Dreaming Invisible…….” is released 28th November 2011 on Drifting Falling.

- Mick Buckingham for Fluid Radio

www.driftingfalling.com