Includes unlimited streaming of Dragging the Sea With Dreams — outlined against afterglow
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 1 day
$15USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Three separate CDs - full color, jewel case, shrink wrap.
Includes the three albums: Dragging the Sea with Dreams, Dragging the Sea with Dreams — outlined against afterglow, and Dragging the Sea with Dreams — time and tide
Includes unlimited streaming of Dragging the Sea With Dreams — outlined against afterglow
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 1 day
$30USDor more
Streaming + Download
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots
and wind is wind)
trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)
e.e. cummings
Trying to write about the music of Robert Scott Thompson in any meaningful way is, for me, like recounting a long, vivid, and emotionally moving dream to someone else, whether close friend or complete stranger: a venture inevitably doomed by a variety of obstacles.
Dreams are very personal. Our dreams are filled with symbols, images, emotional triggers, and memories, all of which only hold meaning for the dreamer; any attempt to translate that experience into language is inevitably accompanied by a sense of the absurd, of hopelessness. William S. Burroughs once described our attempts to relay our dreams to others this way: “For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank.”
Our recall of dreams is never static. They shift in time and terrain during the dream, yet it is at that moment of waking that the dream shatters into fleeting particles of memory, fading echoes and penumbra, all scattering as our conscious mind frantically struggles in vain to salvage even a few handfuls of our shipwrecked voyage. Later, as we try to reconstruct it with a map of words, we often find that the landscape, the waters, even the sky has been transformed, evolving and mutating until the story is no longer ours and we barely recognize our own reflections.
Words are poor translations of experience. They are shadows of thoughts, feelings, faces, landscapes. Using language to describe music, dreams, or emotions is a bit like using a sledgehammer to make an origami crane. Yet language is what we have; it is our go-to tool, even when that tool is wholly inappropriate for the task at hand. To say that it is better than nothing, is to misunderstand the power of silence – and, yes, I am entirely aware of the implicit irony here.
Thompson’s vast catalogue is itself a kind of sea: deep, layered, vast, and eclectically populated with all manner of living and evolving themes. In the last few years, I have only begun to explore this wonderfully transcendent body of dreams and memories, and so even this “map” I am attempting to create must remain incomplete, with many uncharted territories (hic sunt dracones) still present; I have a long voyage, one that I continue to cherish as I go.
The title track of the three CD set, “Dragging the Sea with Dreams,” appears in the second volume as the fifth track, yet I want to start with it because it is a prime example of how my earlier statement regarding the personal nature of dreams and memories is thwarted here; they can, in fact, be shared with an outsider. This is largely due to the fact that Thompson is using music rather than language, and music is the language of dreams and vice versa. The vast and sometimes lonely landscape in “Dragging the Sea with Dreams” has an underwater quality to it; there are soft and echoing layers that evoke a sense of a shared dream, of someone else’s memories collaborating with those of the listener. I found this track to be soothingly familiar, yet each time I listen to it, I am taken to different places. This is a quality that can be found in many of Thompson’s other works, yet this particular project seems to bring many of the themes, sensations, and landscapes to satisfying fruition of a combination of nostalgia and hope.
One of the most impressive characteristics of this project is how effortless it is to experience it; the use of space here, of restraint and maturity is something that is such a rare quality in music, even in the ambient genre. These tracks create a place to visit, a place that can be comforting (in a rather complex way) and yet surprising. “The Poised Radiance of Perpetualness” has a sense of distance that I find intoxicating in that it draws the listener in with a sense of levitation and murmured secrets. Furthermore, the landscape of this track shifts and changes along the way, until we, as listeners, find ourselves, very gradually, in a whole new environment/mood/voyage. Like many of the tracks on this project (and other collections in his oeuvre), this is a piece to listen to on so many levels. I myself use many of his compositions at times as therapeutic, sometimes as inspiration for my thoughts, sometimes as a trip to places I’ve always dreamed of visiting, sometimes recreationally, as there is a hallucinatory quality of Thompson’s work that, at times, has a Coleridgean “Kubla Khan” quality.
If there is any caveat here, it might be to approach what are sophisticated and subtle compositions the way you might approach an exquisite banquet prepared by a world-renowned chef. Yes, fast food has its place, where you can order off a drive-through menu, where quality and nuance are sacrificed to convenience, hunger is rewarded with the comforts of predictability, consistency, and, finally, sacrificed at the altar of mediocrity. Unlike a formulaic pop song (and yes, even bad songs jog good memories), these are compositions that request the listener to set off from the shore, without expectation, without tired and worn-out licks, without “three chords and the truth.” The difference between Thompson’s music and what often passes for music in the popular arena is the difference between an exquisitely wrought poem and a slogan for a fast-food franchise.
Any descriptions I can pull out here remind me of the phrase, “You had to be there,” and this is what Thompson’s music is about. I could write a book about what his compositions “sound like,” yet they are places you need to visit yourself, not read about. My hope here is to, at the very least, and somewhat clumsily, leave some scraps that might intrigue the reader to go out and listen, dream, and remember via Thompson’s alchemy.
As I said of the dream, these are very personal pieces, ones that you don’t merely listen to but experience as a collaborative process. Thompson’s message throughout here seems to be articulated by e.e. cummings: “Dive for dreams or a slogan may topple you.”
The term musical alchemist best describes modern music composer Robert Scott Thompson. Combining his mastery of the
electroacoustic, contemporary instrumental, and avant-garde genres into a swirling cohesive whole, he is an important pioneer on music's new frontier.
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