Arthur - Dreams & Images

Light In The Attic - LP
US, 2015
Acid / Lee Hazlewood / Folk Rock

Classic Light In The Attic reissue. One of these reissued records without hit songs (no 'Baby', no 'Estrelar'), but brutally good. Crepuscular acid folk produced by Lee Hazlewood.

There was a time, not so long ago, when record shops would sell A) new music B) used records. The 2010's saw a big shift of interest from labels from new electronic music to reissues. There was a very simple economic reason behind this paradigm shift: it was less risky to invest time and money into reissuing music that has already proved its worth with an audience (that was willing to pay high prices on Discogs) than to engage with musicians whose music did not exist yet. A paradigm that is still dominating the market. This 2015 release hit the market during the heydays of the reissue craze and it got my boomer-self thinking, "damn, at least they used to reissue good music at the time"... You know very well that some reissued LPs followed the original copies in the dollar bins sonner than expected.

Anyway, 10 years after its release, this reissued Dreams and Images is still an enchantment: a ghostly and fragile male voice floating over minimal and equally haunting arrangements of guitar and strings. Almost a dream of a record, this LP always stroke me as the quintessential example of the reissuing ethos: seeking records that were too delicate and to ideally leftfield to be enjoyed at the time of its release, to introduce them to its ideal audience that was not yet born when it first came out. It feels like watching Blue Velvet or Angel Heart, one of these late 1980's films that encapsulates the spirit of a decade long gone: the mesmerizing violence and beauty of America's 1950's. Qunitessential 1968 US acid folk, almost too good to be true. (NM/NM)

Tracklist

1. Blue Museum
2. Children Once Were You
3. Sunshine Soldier
4. A Friend Of Mine
5. Open Up The Door
6. Dreams And Images
7. Pandora
8. Wintertime
9. Living Circa 1920
10. Valentine Gray