Track by Track: Dreamtime

Brisbane trio Dreamtime take psych music further that most bands dare to dream. Guitarist/vocalist ZAC ANDERSON leads us through a new reissue of their 2012 album ‘Sun’.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

‘Centre of Mind’

So much transformation occurred during the writing of these songs that it’s hard to remember how and why we wrote them, almost like a thick veil of smoke clouds my memory ... I believe this song was originally one riff on an old, accidentally circuit-bent (dropped) distorted Casio keyboard at home. The riff became the main bass line of the song as it exists on record, a chugging medieval blues train which all other elements revolve around. The tambourine resting on Tara [Wardrop]’s hi-hats accentuates the medieval incarnation with a hint of rattling chains quite nicely and this, along with some visions of another world, inspired the dark-fantasy styled lyrics.

There was a period of writing early on with this song where it was all instrumental and the stripped percussion and hypnotic bass line would build and drive while sparse Link Wray styled chords and slow riffs would simmer and burn. I really love and miss this version of the song and tried to record it instead of the current version, but Cat [Maddin, bass and vocals] and Tara said no backsies. We wanted the album to be more psychedelic than the last [2011’s Dreamtime] so we added stuff to the song like the delay and wah sound on the intro guitar riff and the spatial synth canvas inspired by Psychic Ills, the Jim Morrison styled vocals and the Brian Jonestown-esque chord driven wall of sound chorus, and it developed a really spatial wall of melodies. And quite whimsical at times, which balances its eerie undertones. It’s our most pop sensible song; that’s why it’s first on the album, for the breadsticks, it’s a nice bridge from pop sensibilities to stranger structures and chasms like ‘Baphomet’.

‘Baphomet’

This song is inspired by Charlotte Gainsbourg’s line from the film Antichrist: “Nature is Satan’s church.” The song starts like a movie scene in the woods – in the forest represented by the percussion, which becomes more of a summoning ritual as percussion builds and chanting and “omm”ing joins, only to be broken by the explosive presence of a strong ominous force represented by the interrupting single-note doom riff. The singing is inspired by the cover of ‘O Death’ sung by the head Klu Klux Klan member from the lynching scene in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou.

The lyrical concept is similar to stories of the devil appearing at the crossroads, combined with the almost mythological concept of nature being Satan’s church, which almost renders the entire concept of Satan unfathomable. Whether nature is evil or not, there’s a raw power to it which we made sure to reflect in the song. Perhaps fear of the power of nature is why the Church demonised its worship, and demonised the Baphomet, which was one of the earliest graphic representations of western occultism. The Church took the goat-headed man-like figure of Baphomet and turned it into the red-horned goat-man devil we know today. As to whether or not this song is evil, well, it has actually made children scream and cry before, poor kids.

‘The Road’

This is my favourite song off the album. It’s so sombre and yearning, yet indifferent. This is Cat’s song really: the singing and the bass riff set the mood entirely. I believe she had recently broke up with someone before we jammed this one out. Before we started she was absentmindedly throwing around some rad bass riffs and we stopped her on this one. I likened it to the rhythm of Voice of Seven Thunders’ track ‘Dalalven’, which I like very much, and started with some similar guitaring that took its own direction completely. Cat is using delay on her bass and I’m using two kinds of delay on my guitar, but we have synchronised them all and the delays control the rhythm of the song as they fade into the backing synthscape. Halfway through I start catching some loops which build into a melting pot of background riffs and noise, which we all continue to play over the top of until the end of the song, where all instrumentation stops and only the caught loops continue like a sonic photo album of our journey through the song.

‘Equivalence’

‘Equivalence’ is a strange one. It’s a cover of a song with the same name by Blue Phantom, who were a group of Italian session musicians that recorded one album, Distortions, in 1971. It was their only album, but a psych-prog masterpiece that we’ve all tripped a lot of balls to. We’ve added synth and replaced a guitar with synth and used a fast chorus and slide on the lead guitar for a more modern psychedelic sound; we knew we couldn’t get it to sound as lovely and dusty as the original, so we opted for a clearer space sound. Tried out a few synths but just an old vintage Yamaha organ played the keys perfectly in the end. I think we really lifted the song to a new level in a different direction in the second verse, which one might call the chorus – it gets really magical in there with the synth lead and guitar rhythm and only one cymbal crash for every bar. So magical haha, I love it!

‘Sun’

Sun is essentially one bass line. But it really showed us just how much you can do with one bass line and many melodies. It’s three parts, the third part is inspired by Electric Wizard’s track ‘Mind Transferral’ from Dopethrone, the second part is inspired by 13th Floor Elevators’ track ‘Thru the Rhythm’ and the first part is the most original – it was not inspired by nor can I link it directly any other music I’ve heard. I love singing the first part of the song with Cat. I think it’s beautiful; I’m not a great singer but I love this part, it’s cathartic. I think at this point in our live shows when we play ‘Sun’, we all relax and release any personal tension or stage nerves while we play this song. It’s a very comfortable 10 minutes or us, and naturally the title track of the album. The lyrics are poetic mashups of nature, cosmos, humanity, love, fear, paranoia and freedom. We also discovered how to play heavily and somewhat happily in the end of this song, which we’re incorporating in songs for our next album.

‘Brujeria’

‘Brujeria’ is Spanish for witch. Cat learned a bit of flamenco on guitar and while I tried playing the same chord progression as she showed me it, we went perfectly out of sync and created this haunting Spanish nursery-rhyme melody by accident. It became the second and fourth verse. Then we added some more parts to make a story out of it with some reverse sitar and sparse drumming opening up the song and a dramatic up-tempo section dropped into the middle for good measure. With no lyrics, it’s like a three-minute score. To me it tells a story of a man lamenting the loss of his wife burnt at the stake for persecution of witchcraft, and her subsequent resurrection and revenge. The guy who recorded this album, George Bennett of Unicorn Planet, whistled the tune over the last verse. He’s a great whistler, among other things.

‘Art of Invisibility’

This song is named after a book that tells and teaches ancient methods of the art of invisibility. Funnily enough, I borrowed this book from a friend and he told me it had a habit of disappearing and slipping into other people’s hands. I laughed at his attempted seriousness, only to experience the book disappearing in my house shortly after, and then when I went to return it to his house, it had seemingly disappeared from the interior of my car. Really strange.

This is by far our most psychedelic song. It’s quite a journey. The first half is inspired by the instrumental parts of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s song ‘1983 … (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)’ and as the song picks up I begin reading verses from old alchemist passages in Art of Invisibility. These passage are so richly poetic, and are like riddles that promise you riches or great power if you can crack their hidden meaning. They feel so magical and relaxing to read aloud, and they confuse the mind; I got so into it that I started adding my own in, so the recording is a mix of alchemist passages being spoken over psychedelic swirling chasms. The song climaxes in a speed-up of unified staccato pounding of all instruments before delving into five minutes of swirling meditational synth. (Only on the digital track though – vinyl version ends upon climax.)

This song is for people to trip to, and for people who aren’t tripping, it’s to try and make you trip. We opened the album with a track with pop sensibilities, so we closed with this. Put in on next time you alter your mental state and let me know what you think. ☺

+

The ‘Sun’ reissue is out now – with new cover art by Meg Adamson – on both black vinyl and transparent purple vinyl through Conquest of Noise, and digitally via Bandcamp. Read Tim Fitzpatrick’s 2012 review of the album and Zac Anderson’s Track by Track for the reissue of their previous album. Dreamtime launch the new reissue on Friday, December 19 at Crowbar in Brisbane with Bad Valley, Black Deity and Hobo Magic; more info here.