If Hollywood’s taught us anything about dream sequences, it’s that they’re often psychedelic, color-saturated affairs. Anything goes in a dream sequence — just let the imagination run for maximum effect. Phil Struck counters that idea with NNO, a washed-out vista of subconscious wandering, a minimal overture lurking at the back of the mind. Utilizing samples and coating them with effects and electronics, the Hamburg-based Struck summons false-color visions from his atmospherics, like telescopic images of solar eclipses where the sun’s corona appears as a drifting and ever-changing specter. Do we breathe stellar material as we lie unconscious in slumber? We do now, under unfamiliar skies, within impossible landscapes, upon ground composed of incomprehensible material. Struck, a photographer, dreams behind his lens and exhales these sonic tapestries, merging the seen with the heard, the internal with the external, the obvious with the hidden. In doing so, he readjusts the very idea of perception as a conduit for meaning.
Cassette from German label Ana Ott comes in a “hand-made, screen-printed, heavy cardboard slipcase.”
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