Forest Scenes – MIZU
Forest Scenes
MIZU
EP
Experimental
Dom Lepore
July 3, 2024
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Dreamtone is so often characterised by its length; the genre boasts releases with tracks consistently pushing over the 10 and 20-minute mark. This is primarily to set the mood that permeates most, if not all of dreamtone: music or emotive drone sounds designed to create a sublime atmosphere or to bring to the surface the sense of calm residing within all of us.
It goes without saying that creating an atmosphere, even a spiritual one, can be tricky. Mastering that sweet spot between awake and asleep. Real and unreal. Go too heavy and the illusion breaks, too quiet and it fades into a shallow greyness ruptured by outside din. How best to keep the listener in limbo? A good inclusion would be some sort of guiding sound, to enable us to make our way, closely following a trail, into whatever atmosphere the artist has chosen to convey.
That’s how the ghostly plucked strings of Euphoria Engine’s Cloudfall are best described. Emerging at around the 3-minute mark, when a purple aura has sufficiently thickened around the listener (much like the release’s artwork). The sounds are instantly navigational in nature, like the distant flashing of icy lights while sailing on foggy water. The listener may find a canyon emerging in their mind’s eye, judging by the way the strikes of plucked string bounce down over the large expanse. It’s as if they glide along still water and fade into moist trees and flora thousands of yards away.
If you’re able to even give yourself time to open your eyes and pull yourself back to the real world… it’s been 11 minutes. If you can’t, your either in a beautiful sleep… or you’ve been spirited to a different plane. Euphoria Engine draws the listener in so incredibly deftly, one hardly notices it’s happening. That’s the true strength of dreamtone as a genre.
And this is just the “guiding” sound of the track – the part of a dreamtone track characterised by providing the melody and the escorting aspect of the listening experience. The purple backdrop hums into the foreground in special moments as well, just as the fog seems to clear, there’s a rush of this warm, welcoming aether. The voyaging feel to this song is led by this slowly reverberating guiding sound, and the path cleared of any feeling of fear by these pulses of pad. The first half of Cloudfall is, from start to finish, a tremendous trip further into the numb world of the subconscious.
What the second half lacks in excursional energy it makes up for in its emulation of spiritual absolution. Those lush pillowy swells of pad now take centre stage as the listener stands still, their water-based journey coming to an end and their vision filled by the thick and palpable movements occurring in the middle distance. These blossoming chords are brought into the foreground or spirited away simply by the pace at which the chord progression moves, transforming unyielding monoliths of beauty into cavorting, ballet-like spirits. These spirits are dragged up and down in pitch at certain infrequent occasions too… the overwhelming experience wavers briefly as this happens, bringing the listener levels above or below the space they find themselves in, to then resume the spectacle of dancing chords in the clearing.
Though these elements cavort and even turn inwards at points – characterised by moments lacking the cathartic major-chord swell, replaced by a discordant sense of pause – a golden sun remains untouched and growing gradually. Within the show that plays out in front of the listener lies a nucleus that Euphoria Engine creates to feel eternal, growing with every conclusive chord choice, bringing an end to more and more of the doubt that pervades both sides of this dreamtone journey.
We are guided here, without navigational element, to the unflinching reality of cosmos. The previous track offered us signs and signals through our own subconscious, here, following that inwards journey, we come face to face with the unknowable other, residing all around us but also inside ourselves too. Ablaze, offering a sense of completion and purification.
Good dreamtone provides a calming and thoughtful atmosphere, perfect dreamtone invites you both deep inside your own mind and out, up and away into another dimension entirely. If the listener permits it, Cloudfall has the power to do this. The first side of this release is a journey and the second its resultant spectacle. Together they form an incredible and essential release.
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