Field Lines Cartographer :: Dreamtides (Castles In Space)

Dreamtides is another widescreen work that plays out like a sonic dream journal, with vivid illustrations of unreal landscapes couched in slow-elaborated recursions of languorous synth-tones.

A semi-recalled dream dredged from the depths

Over recent years Lancastrian synth maven Field Lines Cartographer (hereinafter FLC) has quietly built up an impressive catalog, the latest entry into which, Dreamtides, may be his most resonant yet. A sonification of a semi-recalled dream dredged from the depths—expression of something from deep in the artist’s psyche and perhaps the cosmos, or aether, or so muses Mark Buford, creator of these suggestive synth-scapes that range from pastoral and pretty to dark and doleful.

Buford’s experimental ambient drone/synth project has been variously described—”shimmering unsettling noodles” (The Wire), if you will, or perhaps “the sound of big, strange worlds” (Electronic Sound Magazine). The latter is actually pretty apt for FLC, trailer of titles like The Ferric Landscape, The Glimmering Plane, and WF 14 – Formic Kingdom, that gesture to other realms beyond our Cartographer would evidently have listeners chart. Dreamtides is another widescreen work that plays out like a sonic dream journal, with vivid illustrations of unreal landscapes couched in slow-elaborated recursions of languorous synth-tones.

Aqueous sonorities and strange susurrations ::

The imposing scale of the cosmos inspires a set of suitably widescreen modular pieces, opener “Hexagon Sands At Low Tide” setting an epic 14-minute keynote with diaphanous amniotic ambience evoking a sense of gauzy elsewhereness, while “Octagon Dappled Shallows” disports itself with anthemic trails. From “Sable Bay With Stars,” brooding with portent, to the febrile “Rhomboid Storm Clouds,” an almost perceptible dream world is evoked with aqueous sonorities and strange susurrations. It doesn’t depart substantially from the style template of the previous The Spectral Isle (2020), but is notably lighter (in both senses) than most other FLC work, which has been wont to dwell in shadier zones.

Dreamtides was conceived after a dream of the weird vivid type whose dream scenes stay with you after waking, sticking around after the specifics have faded: a strange coastline, a beach. A dream-world of hyper-vivid colours and a topography of regular geometric shapes, rather than natural forms. A sense of both peace and slight unease. Arcane but also oddly familiar and reassuring. (Rough Trade)

The track cast, written, performed and recorded in order of appearance, is configured with an extended ‘shape’ track followed by a shorter ‘colour’ piece. The album is long and requires slow time and quietude, those who would fully feel the benefit being issued a challenge—one that fans of Pye Corner Audio, BoC, Dalham, and fanciers of hauntologically-inflected post-Klaus Schulze/Tangerine Dream scenery will want to rise to.

Dreamtides is available on Castles In Space. [Bandcamp]