Dreamcation (deluxe Packaging Gold Vinyl) - Vinyl

"IYm starting to think that the only way Black Clouds would fail us is if they simply decided not to show up." YBrightest Young Things The final minutes of Black Clouds' last album did not have a happy ending: In a spoken word coda, Clutch's Neil Fallon repeatedly informs the listener that "everything is not going to be OK," and despite the fact this had already been well communicated by the album itself, this was the first time that language had been used to articulate its quasi-nihilism. For these Washington D.C. experimentalists, it was a rare, but vivid show-me-and-tell-me moment. This is all to say that "Dreamcation," Black Clouds' sophomore album and Collect Records debut, is a different kind of record. The doom, once mined for power, is harnessed for a more nuanced kind of energyYthe darkness curbed just enough to let the light inYand the result is alternately aggressive and ambient, often in the same song, and sometimes in the same part: "Carcosa," for one, takes equal cues from funeral and ascension, and "Some Of Us Are Meant To Disappear" pummels you into a warm hug. As a smart and measured progression, Black Clouds finds itself at their most introspective on "Dreamcation," and if this album's finale eschews language altogether for a wash of subtle chords and a blissfully ecstatic drone, it only becauseYperhapsYeverything is going to be OK after all. Y Produced by J. Robbins (Clutch, Against Me!, Dismemberment Plan) and mixed/mastered by Chris Common (Isis, Mars Volta, Pelican, Minus the Bear)

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1. We Begged For The Floods
2. Don't Look For Me
3. Carcosa
4. And Then I Dove
5. Accept The Mystery
6. Some Of Us Are Meant To Disappear
7. Mt. Rainier
8. Low Places
9. Everyone's Waiting
10. Perennial

Cover: VG+
LP: M-

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