For people who never heard of Ooze or Fredrik Ohr before, the Dream Flash EP can be the start of something beautiful that will expose them to some of the timeless and multicolored sonic bliss offered on the Aleph Zero catalogue.
[Release page] Served as an appetizer to Aleph Zero’s reissue of Ooze’s psychill classic, Where the Fields Never End—originally released in 2001 by the legendary (now inactive) Spirit Zone label and has been unavailable for many years—Dream Flash is a piquant little EP made of two tracks. Track 1 is a completely new track by Ooze—the downtempo and chillout project of Sebastian Mullaert, half of one of the major acts in electronic dancefloor music in the last decade, Minilogue (Cocoon Records), and also half of the leading psychedelic trance act Son Kite. Track 2 is a remix of the first track, done by the talented and creative musician and sound sculpture from Stockholm, Sweden; Mr. Fredrik Ohr.
I assume that one of this EP’s purposes was to make us look forward to Where the Fields Never End : Revisited—the double reissue by Aleph Zero that includes the original album, plus a second CD, containing remixes of the original tracks by leading artists such as Bluetech, Minilogue, Porn Sword Tobacco, Eitan Reiter, Omnimotion & I Awake, Koss, Evan Marc, KAB, Spatialize and Sebastian himself—but it actually made me look forward to a new Fredrik Ohr album a lot more, though at the moment there are no news on such a thing. Track 1 on this EP, “Dream Flash,” is a lovely, loungy, dub-flavored, trippy piece; and you can hear it was made by someone who knows what he is doing, and that he has been doing that sort of thing for a long time. The remix by Fredrik Ohr takes “Dream Flash” to the strange far-stretching districts of IDM, glitchy downtempo electronica, and modern classical, and offers a more adventurous take. Fredrik Ohr’s debut album, Falling through the Earth (review here)—released on Aleph Zero in 2009—displays an exceptional and alluring blend of downtempo electronica, contemporary jazz, ambi-dream pop, and modern classical; all dipped in mystical Asian influences and a 70s psychedelic delicate feel. If for some reason you’ve missed it, it is strongly recommended that you’ll pick it up.
To sum things up, it’s worth getting the Dream Flash EP for the great sleek sound designs it offers. It will give a little treat to Ooze fans who have been waiting to hear something new from him for a long time, and for people who never heard of Ooze or Fredrik Ohr before, it can be the start of something beautiful that will expose them to some of the timeless and multicolored sonic bliss offered on the Aleph Zero catalogue.
Dream Flash is available on Aleph Zero. [Release page]
