If you’re looking for some calm (and who isn’t), then drop in on We Were The Hum Of Dreams, which releases April 27 on the recently-activated French outfit, Laaps. Music is medicinal, and the fragile, ambient-tainted atmospheres that grace the record are made all the smoother thanks to Rin Howell’s warm vocals, which drip onto the wax like warm honey.
The eight offerings are reminiscent of Spring, and even the advent of a dystopian lockdown can’t reject or hinder the turning of the season and the gentle revealing of her face. There are slivers of renewal within the music: hope after months of a merciless freeze, and the first shoots after a melting of ice. Squeezed like lemon juice over the music, a saxophone – played by Cody Yantis – adds an extra band of colour to the music’s growing rainbow, sweetening its overall concoction. Offthesky and The Humble Bee make delicate-sounding music together, and their second outing – following on from their IIKKI collaboration in 2019 – stands in solidarity with and continues on from their debut, perhaps even lightly expanding upon its foundations.
When they enter, the vocals are soft, carrying a sweet remembrance in the wistful humming of an old song and a peach-of-a-moment. There’s an ache in there, a deep wanting to return, but one will also unearth, with a reluctance that has yet to ascend into acceptance, the knowledge that all has been lost. We Were The Hum Of Dreams floats in the cosmos, out of time and free of its gravitational constraints – time itself being a form of lockdown, ageing the skin and wearying the mind. Unspooling like a day with a loose and changing set of plans, the tones enjoy an elasticity and mirror a lockdown through the suspension of time, or at least invoking the illusion of suspension.
It chooses to sit outside of time, burying deeper into the music, not for escapism, but to rediscover a lost peace, a want to find joy through music once again. With the screaming Breaking News banners rolling across the bottom of the television screen, it can be hard to find peace, but a daily dose of We Were The Hum Of Dreams will set you right.
Music is immune, and months of quarantine can present opportunities for creative growth and positive change. Celeda and Danny Tenaglia were right – music is the answer to your problems.