Music For Dreams Denmark レコード& CD

Review: Music For Dreams label head Kenneth Badger was so inspired by the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to the classic Michael Mann film The Thief that he and Tolga Bo0.95yu0.95k from the Turkish band islandman decided to write their own soundtrack to an imaginary movie. They managed to write 10 tracks within 24 hours while imagining a film that told a story about two people stuck on the arctic ice cap where one tries to fool the other. Influences from Vangelis, John Carpenter, and Tangerine Dream all feature in what is a superb and escapist listen.

Review: Balearic Mike and Kelvin Andrews are onto a good thing with their Down To The Sea & Back series, returning for a third round of Balearic dreamscapes on one of the loose-fit genre's leading outposts, Music For Dreams. It's 10 years since the last collection graced our terrazas, and in that time there's been ample opportunity for the esteemed duo to burrow even deeper into the nooks and crannies of musical ephemera to find those rarified nuggets which conjure a thousand sun-licked reveries, whether under the auspices of outsider pop, bossa nova, new wave or proto-techno. Those tags might well throw you off course - it's safer to trust in the expertly curated vibe, which will wash over you like those balmy Mediterranean waves.

Review: Be.Lanuit is bringing Ibiza back to its roots as a bohemian nexus in everything he does. As a DJ, artist and fashion designer, he's been projecting good vibes absolutely drenched in Balearic wholesomeness and so it's no surprise to see him linking up with that most chill of Danish labels, Music For Dreams. Lanuit's debut album is a gorgeous sunburst of the softest grooves accentuated by tender fingerpicked guitar playing. It's got just the right amount of thump in the low end to keep your head nodding even as the melodies intertwine with your mind and carry you far away. If you need a dose of Ibiza magic in your day, this album is a fast track ticket to the White Isle.

Review: Perhaps a universal language is something we can never achieve, or at least, stories such as the Tower of Babel suggest. But temporary simulacra of such fancies may be aspired to, not to mention sick Balearic records calling for them. Here Ibiza mainstays DJ Pippi and Willie Graff team up for a swell full-length record, displaying an ingenious shared ear for the combo of live instrumentation, sampling and club-ready mixing. Some 12 tracks escort us through the duo's manifold styles, honed over the course of 17 years and modulated with subtle layers of eloquent instrumentation and effervescent synths.

Review: Danish electronic pop act Hess Is More's CaeKE marks a return to pop's borderlands after detours into orchestral and experimental sounds. Minimalist and mellow, the new album eschews sprawling ensembles for a DIY space of piano, drum machines, and vintage synths all of which frame Hess' wandering voice with eccentric poetry. Balancing maturity with childlike curiosity tracks like 'I Love My Life... Again and Again' exhibit a subversive lightheartedness amid mellow existentialism. The album is a reflection on fatherhood and life's changes since the early 00s that finds Hess embracing a new melody-one that harmonises seriousness with carefreeness, introspection with outward expression.

Review: It is always a joy to hear from the Music For Dreams label. Not only is it a musically interesting outlet but also one that digs deep into plenty of fascinating different scenes. And this is one such case as the project is centered around 99-year-old Iboja Wandall-Holm who sings about memories from her childhood growing up in Eastern Europe. The record plays out like a musical encounter where the songs are worked into magical forms by Danish musician Mikkel Hess and other members of his Hess Is More band with extra collaborative input from label head and producer Kenneth Bager.

Review: Ahead of their European tour, Turkish electronic group Islandman share their EP 'Popsicle Obstacle', the new material on which tracks a heady musical pathway from archaic folk traditions and regional acoustics right through to the modern-day tonic-sonics of the electronic sequencer. Having made headway from the spiritualist dream of primitive past to the glossy utopia of a digital future, Islandman's core members are multi-instrumentalist & producer Tolga Boyuk, Eralp Guven (percussion) and Erdem Baser (guitars). The title is a misnomer, if not for the fact that the six tracks here are hardly obstacles at all; rather, they're hugely well-produced, flavoursome treats, chief among which has to be the incredible track 'Simple Man', which - take it from us - just gets cooler and cooler, timbrally and tastefully.

Review: Scenes From My Soul marks the culmination of the career of one of the essential figures in the history of electronic music on the island of Mallorca, and undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the Balearic sound. Pepe Link (Jose Angel Lopez Ojeda) is a veritable day-one of the Balearic isle's propagation of the eponymous dance sound; this can best be described as a 'mood' or affectation rather than a form, with the artist himself swearing by the subgenre's privileging of "creating a landscape and evoking a moment", rather than following any pattern. Scenes From My Soul implies a state of psychic oneness with the named archipelago, with its instrumental, guitarry dance landscapes resounding as much in the manner of visual impressions of a jettied eye as they do in the manner of a landscape painting. Our fave here has to be the acoustic pluck swanabouts of 'Vem Menina' and its equivalents heard across the record, most of which thoroughly vindicate Link's status as a day-dotter and subsequent legend.

Review: After a 10-year hiatus, Balearic Mike and Kelvin Andrews return to continue the journey of the Balearic Beat with another edition of their distinguished Down To The Sea And Back compilation series, presenting a formidable new set of rare and obscure records. Once more sifting from the formidable crock of late 80s to intra-90s Balearic music, this eight-track LP begins on a serene note with the expertly layered guitars from Dagobert Bohm on their re-arrangement of Josete Ordonez, before moving into increasingly complex but still no less sunny waters from the likes of Vidderna, Lee Ryda, and Pressure Drop. A veritable three years' worth of digging, finally condensed into a single selection.

Review: Prins Emanuel is a Malmo-based artist with many strings to his bow, but here he returns to Music For Dreams for another exquisite excursion into the cosy folds of ill-defined kosmische-jazz-jam band music. It's a warm and many layered sound shaped out by instrumentation first and foremost, but driven by a motorik sensibility which carries each piece on its journey into mellow, mysterious terrain. It's not as explicitly worldly as most Fourth World music, but it shares that sense of relocation to unknown realms via tender means of travel. Immediate enough to draw you in from the first measure but subtle enough to keep you coming back to learn more, this is an undoubtedly brilliant record by a hidden treasure of Sweden's alternative music scene.

Review: First released in 2022, Rheinzand's Atlantis Atlantis updated the Belgian disco-house collective's sound for the utmost present, laying down a thickly layered collection of uncanny dark disco via post punk across thirteen tracks. Now two years on from the original release, Netherlands producer Pete Blaker has teamed up with the band to rework the album tracks; however, in the words of the label and Blaker themselves, this is by no means your bog-standard 'remix' album! Unlike most, this one hears Blaker go the extra mile, sonically refurbishing the tracks with entirely new instrumental layers and vocal takes, personally commissioning the band to do so himself. Formatively emerging after being asked to do just one remix for the band in 2021, this is a rare case of divine inspiration striking in an unexpectedly extended fashion - not to be missed.

Review: Moloko Island is the debut album from Mike Salta & Mortale on Music For Dreams label and is the soundtrack to a getaway world "where good vibes can float freely" and "only fantasy set the limits." The tracks here are made up of those you may have heard on some more Balearic dance floors in the recent past as well as plenty of new ones. The open is a buoyant groove full of the joys of hope and optimism as you set out on any new adventure and from there you can sink back into 'Bon Abanut', have a gentle boogie to 'Yaeyama' and gaze up on the stars while lost in the magic of 'Bye Moloko.'