Dream Bodies shares a lot of the signature sonics with a particular strand of those early gothic and darkwave pioneers, the ones who, rather than take the easier, guitar-fronted, goth as a rock band route, preferred to experiment with the formative synth sounds of the day, rewiring primitive technology to their will and pushing the boundaries of the new digital sound. But more importantly, it is a certain feeling —a vibe —a sonic stance that is also captured here.
As certain guitar bands changed their rock-and-roll garb to reflect their newfound celebrity status as mainstream goths, “Dead Air” reminds me of the more authentic sound of that lay at the grassroots of that emerging genre. A neutral and slightly otherworldly baritone voice, put to sonics that perfectly summed up the cooler, cold-war winds that blew from the experimental nightclubs of Düsseldorf to The Batcave’s denizens of the London alternative night time scene, and eventually on to New York’s own reflection of this.
Goth music evolved very quickly; today’s version of it is almost unrecognizable, being a sub-genre of metal in its most visible form, but as Dream Bodies, Steven Fleet captures something that goes beyond mere sound and instead mines for a sense of nostalgia, pathos, and melancholia romance even, via the more authentic strands of post-punk, darkwave, and dreampop.
And as he struggles to deal with the silence and separation of a post-relationship situation — a state of incommunicado and loneliness — the dead air of the title, lyrically too, he gets to the heart of what thematically drove those early darkwave music makers.
If you want to get a taste of what the original gothic scene was really about, Dream Bodies is a neat reflection of its formative days, whilst also, due to the cyclical nature of such things, a fantastic forward stride into a reemerging and long overdue scene.
Soundcloud
Bandcamp
Instagram
YouTube
