As “The In-Betweens,” my first sonic encounter with Colin Woltmann, so ably demonstrated, his is a world of the hushed and the harmonious, the beautiful and the bucolic. Where others, even those ploughing their furrow through the same indie-folk soundscape, might opt for acoustic gimmicks and musical tricks to make their presence felt, Colin takes a more honest approach. In short, he relies on the quality of the songs rather than how they are dressed up to make himself heard.
I always admire the use of space in a song; when positioned carefully, it is an instrument in its own right. An instrument that creates a negative space in which additional atmospheres pool and percolate between the drifting out of one chord or note and the ushering in of the next, making the music more than the sum of its parts, especially as some of those parts are less heard and more experienced, less and instrument but rather a feeling, mood or emotion. Colin Woltmann is a master of this invisible yet potent technique.
“Saw You In A Dream” straddles worlds. It has the dreamy qualities of the likes of Nick Drake and perhaps even John Martyn’s more pastoral periods but it balances those past sounds with a contemporary, indie sensibility. These are not the only meeting points to be found in the music, “Saw You In A Dream” may sit between the past and the present, but it also wanders between the transient and the tethered, the otherworldly and the physical and even draws a line between the folk underground and the more mainstream realms.
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