IMPLODES - Recurring Dream

There's something magnetic, alluring and irresistible about the music of Implodes. Something rather complex to explain, a hidden glue running through folds that, truth be told, are far from surprising. The Chicago quartet is just one of countless creatures in love with Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, certain strains of psychedelia and lucid dreams in general.

A band that could easily have recorded for Projekt, standing alongside names like Soulwhirlingsomewhere and Lovesliecrushing. Instead, it finds itself on the roster of a Kranky that seems increasingly keen to expand its horizons, doing so by betting on names of the very highest quality.

They're not too different from others who came before and others who will come after, people said of Implodes. And yet that aura which their hometown label must have caught on first listen, and which already belonged to the previous "Black Heart", is once again the primary secret of this "Recurring Dream", which, if anything, goes even further beyond the stylistic barriers that were its predecessor's biggest limitation.

Starting from the same foundations, the quartet strips every veil from its instruments, launching into an excursion that passes through multiple worlds without setting itself boundaries, without denying itself any influence, any impulse. What emerges is a crash course that blends darkness, dream, rawness and trip into a single whole that moves seductively and harmoniously.

Implodes' recurring dream starts in fourth gear, reworking noise on "Wendy 2" before advancing into "Scattered In The Wind", a ride for distorted guitar with a post-punk aftertaste. But the dream can have many facets: darkness can grow even hazier, and "You Wouldn't Know It" is there to prove it, drawing heavily from the most sacral Unto Ashes, or it can be softened by a faint ray of light, as in "Sleepyheads", which seeks common ground between dream-pop and the Nico of "Desertshore".

The storm of "Necronomics" and the barrage of "Ex Mass" slot into post-rock coordinates à-la (latter-day) Mogwai, laced with LSD, while "Zombie Regrets" and "Dream Mirror" turn their gaze toward a calm that borders on the ambient. "Melted Candle" picks up some of those traits before exploding into a solemn flight, staking a strong claim as the highlight of the whole record, and the closing "Bottom Of A Well" marks the passage from dream to reality amid synthetic flares and a decidedly more organic sound.

And in the end there's nothing in "Recurring Dream" that we haven't heard before. Nothing that can't be traced back to a world, a musical dimension already discovered and familiar for some time. The recurring dream of Implodes projects only the "usual", same images that most bands enamored with dream-pop, darkwave, shoegaze and psychedelia have tended to reproduce for years now. And yet there remains that magnetic aura, that light that floods the images and gives them a strength that is, indeed, fresh and open to the listener's most varied interpretations. And one that is, in any case, practically impossible to resist.

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04/07/2013