As an ambient album, Pike Dreams leans heavily towards synth, with touches of piano, barely-there percussion, and heavily-muted guitars. It carries a feeling of nostalgia that manifests dualistically in fuzzed-out soundscapes and grainy warmth à la Boards of Canada (“1066,” “1381”), and on the other through dungeon-synth, and quasi-medieval horns and melodies (“1328”). This seems appropriate given the record’s historical concept. Its modernity surfaces in subtle hints at an industrial edge to riffs that break the surface of haze and resonate between echoing pulses, reminding me fragmentarily of Phal:Angst and Haunted Plasma (“1066,” “1789,” “2026”). What Pike Dreams is most of all, however, is quiet. Regardless of the music’s precise direction, it remains blanketed by fog with every element subdued, magnifying the meaning of the word ‘reflection’ in the album’s description.

The Mountain King take the ‘less is more’ approach not only to volume, but also to the structure of the record and the compositions themselves. Pike Dreams could be described as fluctuating between introspective calm and confident expressiveness, but this translates to a change in intensity from 1 to 1.5 on a scale of 10. Gentle pulses trade places with blunt, horn-accented chugs (“476,” “1789”), strings and tremolo blur together in indistinct softness (“1525,” “2010”), and trap beats support liquid guitar-synth hybrids (“1789,” “2026”). Often, the blurred boundaries of physically and synthetically-crafted sounds are beautiful, melodically and precisely in their dreamlike ethereality (“1066,” “1524”). Often, however, do the persistent understatement of movement and omnipresent muting hamper Pike Dreams’ ability to gain its listeners’ attention. This muffling is no doubt intentional, and does work well at intervals: for instance, in the service of contrast or transition (“2010”); acting as a musing pause (“1524”); or to amplify a melody’s poignancy through almost painful delicacy (“1066”). Yet its unequivocal application to all moments of all songs can make even the grandest passages underwhelming.

In this regard, it’s uncertain how a listener is meant to relate Pike Dreams to its subject matter. On the one hand, the deliberate vagueness of the soundscape mirrors a look back through the mists of time, and allows the audience to project their own sentiments onto its subtle evocation. On the other hand, this same nature prevents the audience from connecting to the music itself, and from connecting the music to its supposed year of reference. More minimalist tracks (“1328,” “1381,” “2026”) may work better when the listener detaches, but more expressive ones (“1066,” “1524,” “2010”) when the listener invests in their refrains—and the ones in those tracks are often very lovely. Whether there’s an issue here will be down to the role one designates to a concept album—especially of the instrumental and ambient kind.

Pike Dreams is as hard to pin down as you might expect from the above and from its appropriately mysterious title. As a whispering, quite beautiful, backdrop, it makes for a soothing and introspective experience that I can’t deny I enjoy returning to. In many ways, it’s a breath of fresh air amidst a constant storm of fast and extremely heavy music that so often fills these halls, and a chance to exhale and let go in a time of conflict and strife. The Mountain King may not have done enough to fully embody their themes or impress their compositions’ identities upon the listener, but how it feels for the duration is worth something.

Rating: Good
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: VBR mp3
Label: Void Key Recordings
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: March 6th, 2026

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65daysofstatic

On the surface, 65daysofstatic’s new album is an ambient electronic record à la Boards of Canada’s Tomorrow’s Harvest or Brian Eno’s Small Craft on a Milk Sea. But what 65daysofstatic are after on their new release does not merely concern fans of a single genre nor an entire group of genres. The ideas and emotions they seek to serve up via replicr, 2019 are relevant to creators and consumers of art forms of all shapes and sizes. Yes, this includes those who frequent this blog and are willing to acknowledge the worrying current state of the world and experience what 65daysofstatic have fabricated in response to it. Given the subject matter, it makes sense then that the vibe replicr, 2019 emits is agitated and visceral—even stomach-knot-inducing. Each of the 14 tracks builds upon the growing tension of the last, reminding me of Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow’s anxious and brooding soundtrack for the 2014 science fiction film Ex Machina.

During their previous work on the score for No Man’s Sky, 65daysofstatic reveled in picking apart and destroying sounds to arrive at new and alien ones. On replicr, 2019, however, they instead try their hand at building stripped down sonic textures from the wreckage and debris left over from their earlier work. The result is an album that refuses to sit still and miraculously evokes the exact feelings of dread they set out to conjure. Album opener “pretext” starts off by summoning a dream-like state with a spectral synth before the furiously rhythmic “stillstellung,” evocative of Eno’s “Horse,” steamrolls you down. There are endless exotic treats for your ears to discover throughout the rest of replicr, 2019. “05|| | 1|” is wonderfully warbly, “gr[]v-_s” meanders in an amorphous fashion, and I could not be more fond of the way the tender sound of wind chimes contrasts with glitchy synths on “five waves.” Final track “trackerplatz,” my personal favorite on the album, starts off pretty with delicate bells and clean guitars like a This Will Destroy You or The Album Leaf track. “trackerplatz” is not only a pretty track, though. Melancholic and somehow hopeful at the same time, layers of noise and static gradually build until all the tension of the album is released in one last ringing note.

replicr, 2019’s sole shortcoming worth mentioning is that the album has a tricky time finding a groove. Half the tracks barely make it over three minutes, resulting in an album that does a fine job of jerking the listener back and forth. Maybe this was 65daysofstatic’s intention, but I can’t help but wish the transitions were smoother to allow for a less erratic listen.

Since their foundation in 2001, 65daysofstatic defy classification, situating themselves on the fringes of a multitude of overlapping genres, just out of reach of any who attempt to claim them as one of their own. Words cannot do replicr, 2019 justice. Otherworldly and intricately textured, it is an album you must experience in full in a quiet place unperturbed by the usual constant streams of information. I am unabashedly a 65kid and will be getting mighty comfortable with replicr, 2019. I encourage you to do likewise.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps mp3
Label: Superball Music
Websites: 65daysofstatic.com | facebook.com/65propaganda
Releases Worldwide: September 27th, 2019

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Light, but not lightweight, the third album of the duo completed by fellow multi-instrumentalist visionnaire Alexander Tucker (one with enough talent to fill at least a couple of Bon Iver and three funeral doom records with indie gems) is an artistic goldmine. Psychedelia is a dangerous weapon usually deployed in a game with no rules and ruthless players, and if you make a bad move, you end up killing your listeners with boredom. But can this possibly happen on a Grumbling Fur album? Not that I’m aware of. Underneath the melodic blanket lie strata of krautrock, electronica and pop, all wisely entangled and elegantly indiscernible. And these things don’t lie.

If you get the impression that the futuristic emphasis of tunes like “Eyoreseye” (where Kraftwerk provide the rhythm and Orbital contribute with ideas) betrays a certain fascination with soundtracks, you are most probably right. The whole album seems to have been written while absent-mindedly looking at sci-fi movies on mute. “The Ballad of Roy Batty” is, after all, a concentric tribute to one of the finest soliloquies ever captured on film. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe”, he mutters. And if you listen to Glynnaestra with your eyes properly closed, you inevitably end up believing his story.

Daniel O’Sullivan seems to carry his outstanding baggage of experiences with him like a homeless sticking to his priceless material wealth. Gone are the days of the prog madness that were Guapo and Miasma and the Carousel of Headless Horses and you will not hear their apparent anarchism in any of these tracks. But if you listen carefully, you can still pick up echoes reverberating from the distant five suns which gave the name to one of the greatest indie albums of the noughties courtesy, obviously, of Guapo. Oh, and Sunn O))) and the natural elegance of Ulver? They are both here, somewhere and, still, the final, overall amalgam manages to sound extremely coherent.

A hyperuranion of ideas, this is! One where the loop is king and the drones (see “Ascatudaea”, for instance) paint a spacescape (a neologism, quite certainly) where the only direction is forward. From Kraftwerk to Boards of Canada; from Depeche Mode to Miracle, from Steve Roach to Tim Hecker. If the first two albums (Furrier and Alice) had somehow reminded us of Brian Eno and David Byrne’s collaboration in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, where it was difficult to discern who was (egregiously) doing what, Glynnaestra manages to sound a definitely more cohesive album.

One of the reasons is, surely, partly to be found in the departure of Jussi Lehtisalo from Circle and Dave Smith (also of Guapo), but there is definitely more to it. O’Sullivan and Tucker, when together, do not contribute with something; they share the same head and talent. “Dancing Light” is probably the track that best represents this synergy of two gifted artistries with its synths, the pounding bass and the haunting vocal harmonies that hook the listener without having to resort to ornate and utterly useless debaucheries.

Loops, rhythm, drones, laser beams, mantras, neon lights. Two English gentlemen have made your job shamefully easy, you scriptwriters of the world! There is a movie that is waiting to be written. Somewhere, sometime, somehow.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
Label: Thrill Jockey
Websites: | Facebook.com/grumbling-fur
Release Dates: Worldwide: 2013.07.22

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