Lucid - Baby Labyrinthian

The first enigmatic release by Lucid. It begins with "A Question" and continues
with answers (like "Entrust Not In The Illusory" and "Open Your Eyes, Now
Open The Door") that lead to even more questions. Lucid's music can be
described as a unique dream-like blend of genteel musique concrete-oriented
songs and instrumentals. The instrumentation ranges from traditonal
instruments to toy instruments, found objects, and discovered sounds.

Lucid was presented to me as 'ambient from Seattle' (frightening enough). It
contains 31 pieces of engaging, poignant musing. I guess if you took L7 or
Nirvana and forced them to play underwater at the threshold of audibility, it
could sound like this. Lots of somnambulistic guitar and tentative vocalizing in
a bath of wooly lo-tech recorded sounds. If a luddite fetish with analogue
sound and low resolution vinyl is part of the zeitgeist, then Baby Labyrinthian
could
be the millenial album! There are some quirkiness - but Lucid lacks the
generous humour and ebullience of Faust. I like this album a lot, though it
does exude a kind of viscous lethargy which, after 75 minutes, has sucked you
into near immobility.

(Paul Schutze) Wire Magazine 12/1994

Airy and haunting, Seattle's Lucid combine tape loops with sparse
instrumentation and vaporous voices. Each remarkable track is built from a
sonic element such as birdsong, hushed prayer, or amorphous mumbling,
around which the band spins it's fragile spell. The closest comparison might be
a dreamy fusion of Loveliescrushing, His Name Is Alive, and Pram. But Lucid is
in a class of it's own. Sometimes so quiet that they melt gracefully into the
background; these ghostly strains would be an ideal soundtrack for the
Brothers Quay or Jan Svankmajer. There is an enchanted atmosphere to this
album, as if to speak would be to break the band's mesmerizing hex.
Unfortunately, Lucid threatens these charms by offering a delicate, but more
conventional song on the last track. It's a strangely common ending for such
an uncommon album.

(Gil Gershman) The Big Takeover Issue 38 - 1995

Made up of seven people who play everything from guitar and bass to zither,
they concoct an extremely varied and interesting batch of sounds. Their debut,
Baby Labyrinthian, has 31 cuts on it - and it's a single disc. The tracks are
pretty short, unlike your typical ambient release, so they're great for those with
small attention spans or little time. But Lucid's best asset is it's collective
mentality. The project was completed over a year's time, with various members
apparently coming and going at will. It may sound like blibberblubber to you,
but believe me, it's way more engrossing than a lot of things I've heard lately,
and that's why I'm telling you about it here, even though it's been out for close
to a year.

(Marshall Gooch) Pandemonium 6/95.

Lucid ignore most of rock's conventions, drfting into a hazy area between
dream pop and isolationism. Baby Labyrinthian is a retreat into a private
netherworld as mysterious as the dark side of Pluto. Muted instruments and
voices swirl, burble, and murmer in gray and umber tones. Lucid sound at once
ancient and fresh. I think I've heard the future of music...or did I dream it?

(Dave Segal) Alternative Press 3/96.

The first release on the mysterious and well-worthy AE label from the Seattle
area, Lucid's debut album, Baby Labyrinthian, captures the hushed, dark
power that the company became known for over it's short striking history. With
plenty of overlap between the musicians here and those in After The Flood ---
one somehow appears to be a spin-off project of the other --- the two acts
share a similar aesthetic of fragmented, minimal pop/ambient explorations.
While the relative accessibility can inform similar acts like early His Name Is
Alive or Black Tape For A Blue Girl, there's little in the way of direct melodic
hooks and much more mood-setting and careful arranging of low-key elements
throughout. Echoing creaks and mechanic clanks, slowly phased loops of
sound behind slightly distorted vocals, deep, low rumbling drum sounds, and
more, help to make up this lengthy album --- 31 songs over 74 minutes. Dale
Lloyd, the more or less prime mover in After The Flood, also plays a large
range of instruments here, but again the exact creative role of anyone in the
collective --- seven performers total are credited --- is obscured in favor of the
overall presentation. There are some slightly more straightforward parts --- the
guitar/vocal interplay of "Forgive If I Forget", although kept low in the mix, or
the more upfront but still incredibly delicate "I Overheard". While the whole
album is arguably of a piece, there are a number of individual moments worth
considering --- the cryptic moan/howl on "Ignite The Foresight" followed by the
ebb and flow of shivering, nervous sound on "Of The Miniscule Incubus", the
creeped-out wail and church organ collage of "But I Never Wept", the murky
wash of "Know How It Had Come To Be Born.

(Ned Raggett) All Music Guide