Astral Brain have just premiered their new video for the track titled ‘A Dream’. A dreamlike state captured in audio and mesmerized in video, ‘A Dream’ captures a concept in motion and shows the world that good music is alive and well in the age of the pandemic.
A slightly retro-esque take on slightly out-of-the-box music, Astral Brain enhance the tone of the guitar into shimmering nostalgia with an almost groovy style hook with a track that is meant for vinyl.
This is what good music was meant to be.
About Astral Brain
The band started back in 2015 when I was introduced to Siri af Burén. I had been looking for a new singer to work with ever since my previous band Le Futur Pompiste parted ways, back in 2010. After some years I happened to run into Siri a few times at various concert venues. As it would turn out, she was a member of Testbild! which was a band I had been listening to for years. After some talks we teamed up and she started crafting vocals and lyrics to the music I had been writing during the previous years.
As we both have families and work, we are usually sending files over to each other and that is how the songs take shape. Every now and then we are meeting up for some recording duties or band meetings. Everything is recorded and mixed in my compact home studio, which sits in my apartment in the southern suburbs of Stockholm.
Siri is writing vocals and melodies for many of the songs, whereas I’m in charge of the music production, with some occasional vocal work. We’ve been chipping away at the album since 2015, while simultaneously releasing a few singles here and there. Last year, in the autumn of 2020 we got in contact with Shelflife Records and that’s when the plans for a 2021 album were set.
About ‘A Dream’
’A Dream’ is the oldest song on the ‘The Bewildered Mind’ album. As a matter of fact, the earliest demo dates as far back as May 2008. It was originally written for my previous band Le Futur Pompiste, but as that band came to an end shortly thereafter the song was shelved. I rediscovered it while we started working on this album and thought it would fit in quite well with the rest so I decided to rerecord the song in order to bump it up to the sonic standard of the rest.
Thinking back to the time of creation, I remember this was one of those songs that basically wrote itself in a matter of minutes. It tells a story about some unlikely events leading up to some unlikely engagements, and about becoming infatuated by someone while also realizing the whole thing is doomed from the get-go. It’s about being left with nothing else but a memory of a dream-like day that you once had.
At the time of writing, I had been listening to Georgie Fame a lot, like the song “Sitting In The Park” for instance, which is a lovely 60’s chamber pop tune. The vibe of that song served as the inspirational starting point for the music of ‘A Dream’, which later developed into its own thing. The backing vocals by Siri added some really nice harmonic texture that worked well with the lyrical content too.
I had previously worked on a video for another single track from the album where there was a visual story line that tied to the narrative of the vocals. With ‘A Dream’, where the lyrics are more like some abstract snapshots of a specific moment in time, I wanted to take a different approach. This time around I wanted to concentrate on the visual imagery, working with strong patterns and bold coolers, to tie into the dream-like euphoria that is portrayed in the lyrics. In addition to the patterns there is some additional footage from my archives, like the sculpture which is a recurring theme in the video. That one really tapped into the lyrics and worked perfectly in the context in order to give a counter-point to all the abstract visuals.
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/astral_brain
https://astralbrain.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/astralbrain
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7oDU5TJ0OiPqfxTlq2VMbk
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC02r6Y0ODYMxK_FCmXpsjqg
