Lucid Dream – Compulsion Songs (Holy Are You Recordings, September 23rd, 2016)

We didn’t have waiting too long to enjoy the third album of unleashed heavy psych / rasta dudes from Carlisle, Cumbria. This new work won’t bear comparison with the previous one of the last year, which impressed so well the critics and thrilled the audiences. The Lucid Dream were, therefore, expected at the gate and not disappoint expectations. I say it now, in my opinion “Compulsion Song” is better than the self-titled album of last year.
The trademarks are all present, exacerbated by the fuzz,  the richness of pedals and effects for the guitars, all dominated and shaped by the dub that leads the music  in an astral dimension, a kind of hyper uranium psychedelia, joining the spaced out insights of the last century to the freaked out drifts of our days. The skillful use of the recording studio constitutes a main feature of the Lucid Dream, much to fear no discontinuity in the narrative plot of the album, when they bury the original inspiration with subtle magic tides waves of space dub, lapping the waters of the Sea of the Moon already plowed by Black Star Liner and dubology licenses of Renegade Soundwave and Banco De Gaia.
“I’m a Star in My Own Right” is pure thin metal dub meditation, full of melodica in  Augustus Pablo’ s style. muscles, tendons and bones oscillate in gentle relaxation of trip waiting for the next “The emptiest Place” which begins with thoughtful minimal guitar chords to derail then bursts of sharp sounds foaming under the impetus of strings forged by the Volcano God. Alternating placid moments and furious assaults on the white noise limit is just one of the basic characteristics of this record. As in the initial “Bad Texan”, which opens with multilayer deviations of musical chased, circular sounds that intensified until reaching the saturation of furious broadsides, steel, impossible white noise. Robotic rhythms, refined drones flavors, tantric meditations and sudden stabs of cruel music fury.
In “Stormy Waters” converge various previous musical paths that are new forms of development if not finalized. The philosophical center of the track is powered by attention to the melody, often structured through the timely use of arpeggios suffused and supported by ecstatic choruses that intertwine in thin membranes and luminescent assuming abducted and mystical cadences.
An album succeeded, full of creamy oriented atmospheres dilated by the tamed reverb , burying jangle sound, articulating the progressive unfolding of the tracks, caressed by chiseled chrome and shiny, and invested by blasts of mercury, colliding with thunderous screech, over the deceptions prospective overlapping by hidden voices.

Vote: 8/10

Schoolboy Johnny Duhamel