Dreamend is the musical outlet of Ryan Graveface, owner and sole employee of Graveface records. Apparently The Long Forgotten Friend is based on stories and memories of a relative from the far past whose life has become this legend. Doesn’t say with who though, so I guess just within their family I have no idea.
So as you can imagine it is very atmospheric, haunting-type music, very soft and melancholy. Very strangely post-rock with a sort of slow minimal thing going on and building into bigger more spirited tracks, yet made with softer acoustic type instruments. Harmonious gentle vocals, bubbling to the surface. In a way it sounds like acoustic shoegazer music, which is apparently what Dreamend’s previous efforts have been, so this would make a lot of sense.
At times this works very well, and makes for this very pretty melancholy music that sort of has this otherworldly quality to it, just puts you into this neat little headspace away form everything and generates this crazy emotional charm to it that makes you want to just wrap the band up in your arms and hug them to pieces crush all the sadness out, but at others the disparate styles seem to clash with each other. Like the vocal styles sounds sappy in opposition to the gently plucked banjo. And you almost want to kill Dreamend.
Like you want to take the cd and just throw it through a window it is so soppy and lame sounding. So really there are the two conflicting elements here, at times beautiful land lush and totally sad and peaceful, yet at others just pure lame emo cheese, almost sounding like some moody teenager bitching about something really lame, I don’t know what teenagers bitch about these days. Videogames?
Yeah that part of it I really don’t dig. It’s a weird contrast as the emotional intensity of the songs that do work just seems so much above, so advanced I n terms of song writing and expression that it’s weird when it flops down into this almost rushed thrown together pseudo-emotional pseudo-charming and folksy blandness.
I get the impression as Graveface is releasing his own work, it is his vanity project and that he is responsible for most of the songs ideas etc (it doesn’t actually say that he is the sole member of Dreamend, but I’m guessing he at least plays a large part).
And I think therein might lie the problem, I think an outside source is very necessary to edit or throw ideas off of, maybe some to say this album is not ready yet, go back and rework some of these ideas, keep this and this lose this.
Yeah, at least that’s the way I’m interpreting this, because the bits that work particularly the beginning and ending of the album are so well done, that there has to be something, it cant be a pure, fluke can it? And I’m not saying that the album is crap or badly done it just is a little uneven in its’ quality. A nice album, but not as great as the potential it shows.
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