By Ruud Peters
When Dreams Become Nightmares is the debut album by the talented duo Anna Murphy (Eluveitie) and Tor-Helge Skei (Manes) together with close collaborator Eivind Fjøseide and a long list of other contributors. Having produced and mixed the album themselves Lethe found home at the interesting French Debemur Morti Productions label.
The couple started this band late 2012 explicitly to experiment and challenge themselves in order to expand their artistic boundaries but still incorporating melody and catchiness. Or as they describe it: an experimental metal/trip hop/electro project where the main rule has been that there are no rules.
Thematically the title already indicates that we have to deal here with a dark, eerie journey through the human mind. Musically the duo tried to create some unique, a genre-bending piece of music and indeed the whole thing meanders through different kind of musical landscapes like a small stream emerging from somewhere in the high mountains finding it’s way to the valley. Main features are the fascinating voice of Anna combined with the often hypnotic electronic programmed music, a job both have handled excellently. The ‘metal’ influence in the music is rather sparse I would say and finds its basics in the industrial side of this genre, think about some Rammstein guitar riffs. What I personally really liked is the incorporation here and there of some classic ‘Berlin-school’ kind of electronics: space and ambient. In tracks like ‘Transparant’ you can almost find the perfect fusion of the industrial metal by Rammstein and the transcendend sound of Tangerine Dream, both of german origin by the way. Together with the electronic beats and repetitive synth patterns it creates a dark undercurrent that fits the title of the album like a glove.
The compositions often resemble the typical post-rock, shoegaze style: a slow, carefully built crescendo to a multi-layered sound fest and then the return to the basic calmness. Just listen to the opener ‘In Motion’ and the 9 minutes plus epic ‘No Reason’ and you’ll know what I mean. But there are also some catchy tracks with a pumping drive (‘Haunted’), even a post-apocalyptic ballad in the vein of Dead Can Dance: ‘Ad Librum’ very gothic with it’s dragging rhythm and disturbing synths. You can almost feel the dust slowly falling from the sky. To pick out some favourites is a tough job, I myself I’m very pleased with the catchy ‘Come look at the Darkness with me’ and the dreamy, cold ‘You’ which somehow reminded me of the icy, melancholic sound of a late eighties gem from Norway: Bel Canto, also a male/female duo. All tracks are already available for streaming on Bandcamp.
For themselves the duo might have succeeded in its plan but can they also reach a broader public with their experiment? For me the album certainly has its merits but I’m not sure if the music presented here is suitable for everybody. It has a little bit of everything so I would recommended the album only to open minded music lovers (I trust most readers of Ech(((o)))es and Dust are!). Just take some time to listen and be your own judge.
