Man, it’s too bad that Tom Cruise went and ruined the concept of lucid dreaming in many people’s minds in Vanilla Sky. But Tom Cruise is crazy; and I, for one, don’t want be in the middle of a preconceived dream state when a floating Cruise head brandishing that unhinged smile sparks an episode of terrifying sleep paralysis.
Artist Christopher Ramos a.k.a. v1984 presumably isn’t a fan of sleep paralysis either, and that may explain why his new EP on the Knives imprint, Pansori, carefully omits all explicit Cruise references —
despite the fact that Ramos acknowledges lucid dreaming as being analogous to the tonal purgatory in which his classical/electronic hybrid compositions believably exist. Attribute the classical leanings to Ramos’s reported childhood education on the subject if you want — though his debut EP Becoming N(one)’s seamless mix didn’t exactly conjure such immediate thoughts of Chopin in your brain to the same extent.
Pansori comes out May 5 on 12-inch/digital, and as I mentioned above, the Kuedo & Joe Shakespeare-run label, Knives, is doing the honors. (Supposedly v1984 was the very first artist that the duo “approached as a label” back in 2014, and with v1984’s first release on the label, an adherence to the imprint’s stated desire to give equal attention to visual artwork becomes clear.) Ramos thinks that both the “beautiful” and “unsettling” qualities of his music are present on Pansori’s cover sleeve (view-able above)…Hey, does that mean that the “beautiful” and “unsettling” qualities of the artwork are present on the EP track “Aria of Dawn” (listenable below)? Have a gander/listen and judge for yourself.
Pansori tracklisting:
01. SPfiNAL TAP re-JUVENescence
02. Too Much
03. False Awakenings
04. Aria of Dawn
05. beauty // IT5INYR-H3D