2350.org - Recurring Dreams of the Urban Myth

This recording is some cloudy beatless ambience originally performed by Chris Meloche in London, Canada, and broadcast over the air via one of the local radio stations in the early summer of 1994. The whole composition is 6 hours long, and one might think of it as a sleep concert, which is something I've heard several artists doing in recent years. London, Ontario is a small town situated between Toronto and Detroit, and one wonders what those urban sprawls would have made of such a minimalist transmission, almost completely devoid of any acoustic landmarks at all. Occupied with looming corporate office buildings and the perpetual hum of automotive ambience, it's almost as if the auras of the two cities were interpolated and processed for the performance. The piece on the CD is simply entitled "Loop 6" and is an ever-shifting, extremely minimal series of REM-inducing drones, and that's certainly intended as a compliment. I've gotten to be pretty picky about what sounds I sleep to. For me, it takes a skilled composer who really puts thought into the textures and themes used in a longer minimal, drone-style environmental piece such as this to successfully pull it off. Now you can get an accurate taste of what the full-length is like from the excerpt included on the Ambient Cookbook or Fax Compilation. And to be honest, you could mimic having the full disc by just putting that track on repeat mode or programming it to play several times. But in doing so what you might miss out on is the delicate sense of evolution or natural progression that takes place. Of course, even the disc is a condensed ("not compromised") version, but at least because of its length the repetitions (if there are any) are less obvious when you have a 73-minute chunk. As I understand it, Meloche likes to pool his sounds together and stick to only those chosen sounds once the composition is "set in motion." Here, the mood is thick and genuine, and not overly dark or brooding. Calm and meditative fits well. The mood changes are very slight, with gentle drafts of new tones constantly flowing into the work. For the Faxophile, this album lies on the organic and earthy end of the spectrum while, say, the 2350 Broadway series is more synthetic and spaced-out. Every now and then in Recurring Dreams, there is something that sounds like the spinning tires of your typical joyriding fool in an underpass, but the sound is so distant and reverberant that it acts more like a sedative then a disturbance. This would be the perfect introduction into beatless ambience or a worthwhile addition to any sleephonaut's electro-acoustic library.

(review by no@h)

For once, you don't have to lay down on this track but just may sit in your seat and do whatever you like to do in a seat. You'll get the distant sound of an old propeller engined plane - you know RrrrrrRrrrrRrrrr - with some howling strings coming and going leaving you a lot of time with just the buzzin' engines. Apparently the non-album version took six hours, say a normal flight time. This is a very nice kind of traveling! Sure, that's what I make of it, but hey, this one doesn't come with a manual.

(review by Jean-Marc Dekesel)

i bought this one the other day. It's by a guy named Chris Meloche. The track listing is "Loop 6" -- 73.22. As it turns out (the sleeve says) that this is an excerpt from a 6 hour version which debuted on CHRW-FM (london, Canada) in May1994.

also from the sleeve: "This is an ambient, environmental electroacoustic work that, once set into motion, takes on a life of its own."

this is what I'd define as ideal "ambient" -- its continuous, with a low rumbling throughout interspersed with bleeps and reverbed out speech. This is background. Definitely good for playing with the lights turned out and you're lying down...

(review by jon sweeny)