Anthology Recordings Presents: Maybe I’m Dreaming
There are countless album compilations, or comps as the kids say these days, in the world that creatively contain any genre, emotion, and artistic atmosphere of music you can think of. While some prefer the critical collections of tracks to be under the melodic moniker of a ‘greatest hits album’ that covers the artist or band’s choice cuts, others find themselves bravely venturing into the ‘various artists’ realm, where several students of sonic schooling showcase their mania for melody simultaneously. Like a core sample, or the revolutionary rings found in the cosmic center of ancient trees, compilations demonstrate a certain mood, or melodic memory, that, depending on the essence of the emotion experienced, can poetically direct listeners in a way that is both cinematic and intimate, like that of a personal playlist. “Maybe I’m Dreaming,” the latest collection of cryptically consuming tracks from the folks that brought you “Follow The Sun,” and “Sad About The Times,” Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Suppression Ring), and Keith Abrahamsson (Founder and Head of A&R at Anthology Recordings), is nothing short of a meditative miracle in a world filled with crippling chaos, and intense injustices.
The album’s narrative paints a timid theme of local teenagers cruising the main drag in their green Ford Pintos and Chevy Bajas on a Friday night as the southern sun melts behind tall trees and silhouettes of students leaning into the wind of weekend freedom. Plans begin to unfold, backseats fill to the brim, while hot breath fogs the glass windows, and suddenly, you hear Barracuda’s “Baby I Love You” on the local college radio station. You realize the night is officially on, and nothing stands in your way of having a good time. While I write this review, a cut on the tip of my left finger throbbing like a headache, and a southern storm brewing outside my whispering window, I find myself genuinely distracted by the visceral vision that gayly graces the album’s cosmic cover. A spiritual style that complements the music in such a monumental way, Pasadena, California-based artist, musician, and all-around visionary Dang Wayne Olsen brings together the esoteric elements of enlightenment, metaphysical melody, and a peace that is as ancient as the sounds that hum from earth’s ethereal ecosystem.
From one end of the galaxy to the other, Anthology, a Brooklyn, New York-based label and publication, radically returns to the gates of the meticulous mind with another brilliant collection of breathtaking songs from the lyrical lungs of the distant past. From country to psych rock, electronic, punk, soft rock, jazz fusion, and everything in-between, “Maybe I’m Dreaming” is a community of creativity that pours into the heart without wasting a single drop during its eager journey into private press prairies. People often ask, “Where does this music even come from? Did everyone who listened to America, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, and CSN&Y, to name a few, end up starting a band in the 1970s and 1980s? The answer is yes. An unfathomable number of people around the world, specifically in the US, were influenced in a way that still, to this day, celebrates perhaps one of our culture’s most revolutionary, and positive rhythms in life. Featuring such eclectic entries as John Lyle, Christoph Spendel Group, The Watson Brothers Band, and Elderberry Jak, who brought you the 1970 classic “Long Overdue,” to name a few, “Maybe I’m Dreaming” is that poetic pinch out of prolonged paralysis that we need after more than half a decade of this seemingly never-ending nightmare we now call reality.
