After more than 15 years of drumming in math rock, post-rock and post-hardcore bands, William Covert began experimenting with live-looed synths alongside acoustic and electronic drums. This experimentation birthed two full-length solo albums characterized by post-rock and krautrock inspired synth loops and melodies, all performed solo with loop pedals and sequencers. "I wanted my third solo album to go in a different direction with different instrumentation," explains Covert discussing the process behind the creation of 'Dream Vessel.'
Combining solo and group improvisation to forge a unique sonic landscape, 'Dream Vessel' melds abrasive noise rock, free-jazz textures and cinematic ambient atmospheres. Joining Covert (on drums) for half the album's tracks are longtime collaborators Jack McKevitt (guitar), and Nathan Schenck (bass), performing together as the William Covert Trio.

The album is six tracks beginning with "Brotherhood Of Sleep" with all musicians present and echoed guitar chordal harmonic kicking it off. Sounds a bit like a laid back King Crimson slow jam, nice and atmospheric but lacking any sort of meaningful development. The follow-up, "Trancers" is in the same vein, and this could be nearly any '70s prog-rock outfit jamming with Bruford / Wetton style interplay from the rhythm section and a guitarist who leans so heavily on the effects pedals it's just crushing. Once again, a bit of style over substance.
The mode of the music changes radically on "Dream Void" where droney ambience holds sway. The sonic palette is both light and heavy and the movement is somewhat subtle. A little more than halfway through, Covert comes in with his drumkit adding a rhythmic element that's more improvisational drum solo than developing a steady rhythm. Oddly enough, it works in a strange, abstract way. "C-Beams" incorporates the same modus operandi with drums and ambient drones, but also adds synth-generated guitar loops as what could be construed as the track's main melodic element. Mood-wise, it's rather dour, devolving into a bit of chaos with reverb crashes and other electronic effects, sounding like wild animals sprung from cages.

The WC3 are back together again on "Throttle" and improvisational noise along with Covert's lightning quick drumming are the overarching components here. Schenck's bass is so low I couldn't even distinguish it. Final track, "Come True" is actually the nicest one on the album, and the one that most closely resembles any sort of krautrock. Covert drums consistently with bass and melody synth loops. Plenty of sonic variety makes this one interesting. Over all, 'Dream Vessel' is a hodge-podge of ideas that may delight some and confuse others but showcases Covert's creativity in atypical ways. I should also mention that the album is available on cassette (limited edition) as Chain D.L.K. does not have a CD/Download/Tape category in its auto-formats.

I hate to start a review, especially a critically overdue one like this with an apology, but here goes. With the current state of affairs, I haven't felt much like reviewing new music lately, but I can't let artists who send me product (that qualifies, genre-wise) down as it just isn't fair, although I bet many more popular reviewers do all the time due to the overwhelming amount of promotional product they receive. I this case, the cassette tape (I don't get many of them) got shuffled around and overlooked simply because I thought it was noise (which is not high on my priority list) as most cassette releases I've received over the years seem to be. This turned out to be the furthest thing from the truth as this album is a particular sort of electronica, and an interesting one at that. My personal apology to the artist, Iain Ross, who labors under the moniker Effective Dreaming for putting aside the album for so long (it was released June 21, 2025) but also for losing your note with your email address. Let's face it, email addresses are hard to come by these days and more than half of the promos I receive do not contain them, and I don't have time to hunt them all down, so many artists never hear of the reviews they get. I'm depending on the label (Fleure Tapes) to send Iain the review. 'Dream Catalogue Vol. 1' follows a long line of releases by Glasgow-based artist/musician Iain Ross going back to 2005, not all of them under the name Effective Dreaming. He draws the project's name from Ursula K. Le Guin's sci-fi novel, "The Lathe of Heaven,” where a dreamer's visions alter the fabric of reality- past and present reshaped, histories rewritten, unnoticed by all but the dreamer himself. In similar spirit, Ross's music inhabits a space where memory, perception and matter blur- where each sound carries the residue of something once real, now transformed and dissolving as one drifts through the seams of the world. 'Dream Catalogue Vol. 1' is intended to be a meditation on texture, transience, and the quiet resonance of what slips away.

The music is a series of vignettes with looping, repeating arpeggios, some drones, melodic interludes, little pieces of electronica and sampling that evoke a feeling, a certain nostalgia, or sounds out of a dream. They are all quite different, and surely some may remind you of other ambient artists. I'm reminded of Phil Klampe's Homogenized Terrestrials project, and to a lesser extent, early New Age electronica producer Don Slepian, but there are many differences over all. There are no track titles, just Side A and Side B which each last 30:36. I think what makes this album very cool is the sheer variety of the compositions which could be visually compared to looking through a kaleidoscope, perhaps kaleidoscopic sound for the brain. There is certainly a psychedelic element to the sounds of Effective Dreaming, and perhaps under the right stimulus, the possibility of synesthesia seems appropriate. 'Dream Catalogue Vol. 1' is all about moods and textures, not snappy, elegant electronica compositions, and the physical product reflects that too. The materials (of the cassette) echo the music's exploration of fragile impermanence and erosion: oxidized metal, magnetic tape hiss, hum. A tactile world where sound wears its decay like a patina. The cassette release is limited to only 50 copies, and at last look there were only a mere 5 copies remaining, so if you're a cassette collector, you'd best not delay.

The last we heard from Barry Schrader was his 'Lost Analog" release in 2022, which was a collection of pieces created from 1972 through 1983, using the Buchla 200 analog modular synthesizer. Prior to that, it was his 'Barnum Museum' from 2013, an excellent album of fantastic and varied cinematic soundscapes. Schrader's latest work, 'Ambient : Aether' is quite different from both of those, being entirely computer-generated in four large-scale movements, an imaginary journey through the aerosphere, traveling from the rising clouds that we can see to the atmospheric edge and the invisible mythic aether beyond. Schrader says the album is not ambient in the traditional sense, but I guess that depends on what you believe traditional ambient music to be. Rather than get in a philosophical discussion of the minutia of genre parameters, I can tell you 'Ambient : Aether' sure sounds ambient to me. It is some of the finest minimal space ambient I've come across, where atmosphere is all, activity is slight, and the tone is everything.

The album's four pieces are: "Cloudrise" - An aural portrait of ever-changing skies, where clouds gather, dissolve, darken, brighten, and vanish in the distance. "Atmospheric Rivers" -- Streams of vapor swell into torrents before dispersing into delicate rivulets of sound. "Supernal Ascent" - A layered voyage through the Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere, and finally the Exosphere, surrounding the listener is shifting sonic strata. "Aether" - The final movement reaches the edge of mystery, exploring the unknown beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

Exactly how the textures and sonic manipulation through the use of a computer was achieved isn't clear, but I don't think the technical methodology is important to the average ambient listener. What I can say is that it is thematically consistent throughout, mostly smooth as silk, and a pleasure to listen to. If space ambient is your kind of music, don't let this one pass you by.

"Chicago-based drummer/composer Charlie Werber unveils 'Krater,' his first release under his own name, an album that transcends the boundaries of rhythm, time and consciousness. Featuring a collaboration with Daniel O'Sullivan (Ulver, Sun O))), Guapo), ‘Krater’ explores circular rhythm, the dissolution of dualities, and the fusion of opposites through sound. Built upon the foundation of Werber's extensive work in avant-garde and progressive music- spanning projects such as The Flying Luttenbachers, Chiromancer, Murmur, Lovely Little Girls and Guzzlemug, ‘Krater’ marks a moment of singular artistic expression. At its core, 'Krater' is a study in ouroboric polymeters: circular rhythmic structures that bypass traditional compositional storytelling in favor of a dynamic interplay between listener and pattern."

Well, that's all the promo flavor-text above, so let's delve into what the music on this album really sounds like. There are two long tracks, over 22 minutes per album side, with Werber being responsible for the composition and playing his drum kit, and Daniel O’Sullivan- all other instrumentation, vocals, additional composition on "Krater 1," mixing, and engineering. The drumming on "Krater 0" (side 1) is consistent and methodical throughout; absolutely tribal, highly repetitive, nearly loop-like but I bet it wasn’t looped but played out from start to finish. O'Sullivan contributes wordless OM vocals, like a chanted mantra giving the rhythm an Eastern flavor. That lasts for a while, then the voice changes a bit, and other sounds are introduced - a plucked string here and there, sometimes effected, sometimes not, violin, flute, all played rather abstractly with no concession to melody, merely for effect. Yes, there is a jammy, improvisational quality to the piece, which is the feature, not the bug. In a certain sense, it carries all the joy and enthusiasm of a drum circle, but a lot more formalized and professional. More instruments come and go in the mix- blippy synth, harmonium, odd vocal sounds, chirping birds, etc., etc. A very trance-like transcendental piece of music that would comfortably fit in the meditative world music category.

"Krater 1" begins with a similar rhythm and a repeated, multitracked wordless vocal by O'Sullivan with a harmonium pad underpinning. Six minutes in, the voices drop out, except for repeated unintelligible phrases and effected, plucked strings that emerge very similar to those in "Krater O," with other instruments mirroring side 1. At this point I'm reminded of the Third Ear Band, a British group from back in the late '60s/early '70s that wove mystical music magic with oboe, viola, cello and percussion. While "Krater 1" sounds very similar to "Krater 0" there are subtle differences, and "Krater 1" seems more fully realized. For one thing, there is a good deal more drone and instrumental groove. It's not the individual elements that make the music interesting though, it's their use in the totality of the composition. Just like life, things happen, arise and fade away. The overall feeling though is one of intense purpose, a celebration of what makes life worth living and the pulse of the essence of it all. While I would have liked both sides to have been substantially different from each other, I see what the artist is trying to achieve, and I believe, for the most part, both of these guys have succeeded very well in this. The album is only twenty bucks, a worthy purchase IMHO.

English record producer & musician Adrian Sherwood has been around for a long, long time and might be best known to reader of Chain D.L.K. for his remixes of tracks by Einstürzende Neubauten, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Cabaret Voltaire, KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails, etc., etc., but his primary genre is Dub, of which I'm certainly no authority of, but I'll give it ago anyway. His latest album, aptly titled 'The Collapse of Everything'; includes the participation of Brian Eno, Doug Wimbish, Keith Le Blanc, Cyrus Richards, and more.

It begins with the title track, a laid back number with flutes, electric piano, electric guitar, and just the right amount of percussion set in the kind of dubby ambience you might expect.Too brief. Could have gone on for ten more minutes. "Dub Inspector" is a little slower with world music influences and a still prominent flute. "The Well Is Poisoned (Dub)" heads into darker, more psychotropic territory, plenty of echo, more minimal instrumentation, but a highly charged ambience. The melancholy sax and flute interplay in "Body Roll" is spot on and makes me think of wandering lonely streets in some foreign country where I don't know anybody. "Battles Without Honor And Humanity" is a dead-slow oddity to be sure. Held together by synth blips and plucked stringed instruments, it lumbers across a landscape you'd rather not be in.

I had to chuckle at the title, "Spaghetti Best Western," and wondered if that's where Ennio Morricone or Sergio Leone stay when they've visited the U.S.; probably not. Of course, there is the obligatory lonesome harmonica and twangy guitar on this one, and while atmospheric, it's rather tongue-in-cheek.(Could have gotten this on a Stan Ridgway album.) "The Great Rewilding" is purely dub ambience while "Spirits (Further Education)" offers a bit more in the way of structure. "Hiroshima Dub Match" is a plodding slog through the rice paddies of your mind with a vaguely oriental ambience and just the right amount of wah-wah guitar. Ending with "The Grand Designer," this seems to be the most progressive and fully realized track on the album, a great way to end it. BTW, I think I failed to mention that 'The Collapse of Everything' is an instrumental album, leaving a lot to your imagination. It should go down well with Sherwood's fanbase, and dub aficionados in general.