Throughout the '70s and '80s, this New Zealand composer was considered one of the foremost electro-acoustic composers in the country. This collection of tape works provides startling insight into his visionary music. Informed by European activities in the academic electronic music movement,
John Cousins' work is entirely personal, and displays a desire to work outside of the abstractionist methods familiar to the genre. Instead,
Cousins deals in a sonic art that works with narrative, spoken word, and field recordings that map a personal topography, somewhere within the dream state suggested in the evocative title. While this recording is considered ambient, its content is far too engaging to fall into the background, and is closer in style to the musique concrète music of
Luc Ferrari or even the post-industrial music of
Nurse With Wound and Organum. ~ Sylvie Harrison