Snack Master :: The Dreamers Of Dreams (Self Released)

Across The Dreamers Of Dreams, Bowman detonates maniacal braindance mechanics, electro errorfunk ripped into synthetic ribbons, and a cut-and-paste sampladelia that early Coldcut would likely have fought over releasing.

A miswired archive of proto-dancefloor ideas

 

John Bowman’s Snack Master project radiates pure Rephlex Records energy: the kind of release that feels simultaneously precision engineered and catastrophically unstable. Across The Dreamers Of Dreams, Bowman detonates maniacal braindance mechanics, electro errorfunk ripped into synthetic ribbons, and a cut-and-paste sampladelia that early Coldcut would likely have fought over releasing. The result is absurdly good. Scattergun percussion strafes the ears while white waving watery sweeps continually dissolve and reform around the rhythms. Bowman’s production vocabulary here is immense; every sound appears not merely designed, but stress-tested to destruction.

“Dark Triangles” opens with flanges set beyond stun, phasing that appears to flange its own phases, and beats that land like the police arriving at the door with deeply unpleasant news. Bass woobs pummel from below while mangled funktopian synths collapse inward and reassemble in real time. It is hostile, ecstatic, and weirdly elegant all at once. “The Weirdest Noises” tears through braindance DnB histrionics with a glorious lack of restraint. The Amen break barges in like a vandal returning to the scene of the crime. Bowman’s real gift, however, is his handling of repetition: elongated phases loop and mutate without ever decaying into mere function. The tracks constantly feel alive, as though the circuitry itself is becoming impatient.

Equal parts dancefloor weapon, psychological event ::

The title track appears as the focal point. Imagine asking twenty-five separate people what they would want included in a piece of music, then irrationally forcing every suggestion into the arrangement. Somehow, against all logic, it works. The effect is intoxicating. Equal parts dancefloor weapon, psychological event, and domestic appliance stress test.

By the time the fifteen-minute opus “Future Funk” closes the release, everything feels like it’s been slowly bending toward this exact spill point. Elements appear and evaporate in real time, drifting between dub techno synth sweeps, white noise tides, and an absolutely ridiculous set of drum kit patterns, all anchored by that gorgeous pokey kick drum that ping-pops and locks like it’s learned how to walk on its own. It doesn’t feel like an ending so much as a final overloading of the system, where everything still works, but only just, and only because it refuses to stop moving.

So here is a truly remarkable album that behaves like a miswired archive of proto-dancefloor ideas, constantly reshaping itself whilst in mid-motion, collapsing genre memory into unstable groove logic, where every track feels like it’s improvising its own rules in real time. Left me grinning, disoriented, energized, slightly overclocked, whilst weirdly and wonderfully satisfied. Incredible job.

The Dreamers Of Dreams is available on Bandcamp.