Dreams In Static - Serene Poetic

Genre instrumental Publisher Dreams in Static/Shemspeed External Links

If you’re anything like me, and statistically one of you has to be, then you have looked at the modern music storage revolution with a sort of ecstatic glee. Being able to carry ten years worth of music in your pocket is a boon to those who prefer their daily activities tracked with the music that moves them.  The ability to create your life’s own officially licensed (well..not mine) soundtrack is one the greatest technological advances of the distraction age, an age of all sorts of better things to do other than interact with each other. What is at play on Serene Poetry, the fresh from the oven from the newly minted Dreams in Static, seems to be an attempt on the part of the artists at work to produce a series of connected well enough songs to be the only soundtrack you will need for some time. That the rest of your mp3s might gather a bit of whatever the digital equivalent to dust, might be is merely a minor quibble when you have something as dynamic as this effort on play.

Dreams in Static is yet another in a long line of proximity impaired collaboration projects. It consists of Diwon, a new York based Hip-Hop producer of the underground persuasion and Dugans, a musician out of Texas that specializes in guitar based orchestrations. Together, they have managed to create the new (even though its not technically a new one) decades first great soundtrack to nothing, to everything, to anything you might be doing.

The first thing one notices when listening to Serene Poetry is what sounds like an attempt on the part of the two musicians to keep the listener on uneven ground at all times, referencing a number of various and disparate influences. From Amon Tobin to DJ Shadow, BT to Sasha, a dash of Timbaland and just a pinch of even Tarantino, there is quite a bit going on and yet never once does it feel as if there is anything but the utmost care given to the output. Never once does the list of reference points feel like a burden or a diminishing point.
 
When people can create their own soundtrack, it becomes rather difficult for artists to presume that they can do it for you. Dreams In Static, with a landscapes built from grindhouse brick and classical mortar, manages to craft the only music you need for that walk to the local conglomo-mart. Laid out like cues to a film you wish you were in, a life the music made makes you wish you had, the album Serene Poetry isn’t as peaceful an affair as its title would lead you to believe. There is drama here. Suspense. Action. Motion. A sweeping, all consuming motion is at play here, on this disc. Even if listened to while inert, as I am right now, at this very moment, I imagine a lonely streetlight lit highway somewhere being driven down at high rates of speed. There is no end to this road. It is mine to traverse into infinity. That’s the movie being scripted in my head as I listen to this. As the track changes, so does the direction of the film. Now I'm slinking down a hallway, slightly drunk, only slightly sure that this is where I'm supposed to be but completely sure of what I'm supposed to be doing. A man of action, even if my actions are questionable.  There are very few albums that I have listened to that evoke this kind of imagery. Such clarity to the images that the mind conjures in response. This is a masterwork of soundscape manipulation and it ranks as one of the first great releases of 2010.