Review – Dream The Electric Sleep – The Giants’ Newground – by Roy Hunter

I think this is a strange one!! It was written and recorded back in 2008 before the band was even formed… It pre-dates all of the other three releases from these Kentuckian souls, before they had even chosen the band name!!

The 16 songs are shortish (for a proggy album) with The Stage being the longest track at 7 minutes 18 seconds just… However, despite their collective shortness, Matt Page and Joey Water’s efforts show the promise that has been realised and recorded in their later releases!!

The sounds? From a light picky start, the 1st track Home swiftly develops into a post rock song of surprising quality. Only a short track though @ 2:42, It left me wanting to hear much more from the duo…

Track 2, We Smell The Blood, a more sedate number with some heavy guitar work – good song but hard to pick out the words at times – that post rock fuzz builds up!! From around 3 and a half minutes though everything calms down again to some ethereal guitar picking…

Track 3 Father Francis – a melodic song, Matt’s vocal range brought right to the fore here.

Track 4 reminds me of some Oasis songs – Ok if you like them I suppose… Come to think of it, the whole album shows some influence from the Gallagher brothers???  On repeated listening, one can pick out influences from other sources – Muse, early Anathema, to name just two…

Overall, I liked this prequel album, it justified my purchase of their earlier (later) publications. Matt has a fine voice and his song writing talent is in no doubt. The guitar work is excellent throughout the album too – the gentle track 7, One Last Fix proves my point.

Halfway through the album at track 8, It Will All Be Over Soon you hope it won’t! The River Current is a light and wistful song (a Dylan influence?) which balances a lot of the heavier music heard earlier. Track 11 Sounds Like Magic is a pure Oasis clone with a better guitar lick now and again.

Acoustic guitar over a mushy radio broadcast reminiscent of some Roger Waters work for #12, and then that excellent guitar jolts one back to the real world for Soulful which, for me, has the best vocal work of the album… I’ll not forget the phrase – Apostle of Hypocrisy – I’m gonna use that in my own writing I think! By far the best track on this album.

The last 3 songs deliver more of the same – high quality musicianship leavened with some thought provoking lyrics…

Buy it – there is much to cherish here!

Released 18th May 2018

Order the album from Amazon here

 

DREAM THE ELECTRIC SLEEP ANNOUNCE RELEASE OF ‘LOST’ 2008 ALBUM ‘THE GIANTS NEWGROUND’

KENTUCKY PROGGERS ALSO SHARE FIRST SINGLE ‘WE SMELL THE BLOOD’

Dream The Electric Sleep have announced details of an unheard ‘lost’ 2008 album ‘The Giants Newground’ which will be released on 18/05/18 via 7Hz Productions and shared the first single to be heard from the album We Smell The Blood.

Dream the Electric Sleep officially formed in 2009 but in 2008, Matt Page and Joey Waters decided to write and record an album together. It was the first time Page wrote the lyrics and took over the lead vocal position in a band, and the first time Page and Waters were the sole writers of a project. “After years of playing together, Joey and I were ready for something different… a new direction, and honestly at that time, a last attempt to find a way forward together as a band. We had played with so many different people and never found a line up that captured what we wanted so this was it! We were attempting to reconceive our efforts together and this album represented that departure” explains Page. 

When the album was completed in 2008, it had a limited regional release and it happened to land in the hands of bassist and songwriter, Chris Tackett. He was living in Huntington, West Virginia at the time but had just accepted an art directorship at a company in Lexington, Kentucky where Page and Waters lived. After Tackett heard the album, he was impressed and intrigued. Through a mutual friend, he found out Page and Waters were looking for a bass player. Waters and Tackett set up try out rehearsal and after the first song, Page and Waters were sold. Chris Tackett would be the new bass player on this new journey. Page, Waters, and Tackett had no band name at that point and rehearsed the songs from the recently released album to start playing some regional shows. It didn’t take long for the trio to begin writing new material. That new material became the band’s first official release, ‘Lost and Gone Forever’.

Dream the Electric Sleep never played songs from that first unofficial album that brought them together.

Discussing the looming presence of the lost release, Matt Page explained: “Over the years I thought about that album a lot. It haunted me a bit. The album meant so much to me on a personal level but I knew we had to move forward, not return to something old. In the summer of 2017 I realized it had almost been 10 years since that album came to fruition. It occurred to me it would be a great time to revisit the material and put together a 10th year anniversary release. It’s a way for the band to reflect on our origin and share that with all those who have supported us over the last decade. That album was the springboard for what would become Dream the Electric Sleep.”  

The album titled, ‘The Giants’ Newground’, was revisited, re-tracking some guitars, bass, vocals, and drums, mixed with many of the original takes from 2008.

“We wanted to update the album some but leave the original feel. We worked over the summer of 2017 and are finally ready to release this 10-year anniversary album! It feels good knowing this album can go into the world and become part of the DTES catalogue where it belongs. I felt like it was a homeless album for so long and now it will have a place to live. I can finally move on from it knowing it is out in the world.” 

‘The Giants’ Newground‘ is based on a series of Appalachian Jack tales that Page’s mother read to him when he was young. “They were these dark, old, mysterious stories that had a deep impact on my imagination. The book that we had in our house was old and falling apart and had been in the family for a long time. The stories always revolved around the main character, Jack, and his constant wandering and leaving. That idea of drifting from place to place, living on the edge, constantly on the run, felt familiar to me when I was in my mid 20’s and it’s the reason I decided to use those stories as inspiration to write an album. It’s a modern re-telling of Jacks search for home, something I too was searching for. A place to find shelter from the storm of my life and mind.”

‘The Giants’ Newground’ will be released worldwide on May 18th 2018 via 7Hz Productions (ADA) and will be a precursor to a brand new album being presently recorded and due for release in 2019.

Tracklist:
 
Home
We Smell The Blood
Father Francis
This Is My Crowd
We’ll See
The Stage
One Last Fix
It Will All Be Over Soon
Black Ink
The River Current
Sounds Like Magic
Interlude
Soulful
Astray
Head Out of the Clouds
Dirt Under Your Feet