| AURORA SUNDER "The most ethereal release by Lucid. And maybe my favorite (until next one?). Each track seems to be a different part of one long dream. It's amazing to see that although the album is quite varied (so many moods!) it nonetheless flows very naturally; it has a real continuity. Another important quality is without a doubt, the originality (as always with Lucid). I can't think of any other album that sounds like Aurora Sunder. From the dreamy 'Luminous' to the moody 'Clarion', there's a whole world of poetry. The voices of Rebecca Bird and Mishka are unique and definately add a 'je ne sais quoi' (mystery?) to Lucid. What's more, there's an inherent sense of humor to this release: the Mark Taylor-Canfield (or should I say Canfield-Taylor? :-)) joke is hilarious. It's also the proof that Lucid can cover indefinate sonic territories: from melancholy to pure fun. Then one could wonder how to describe Aurora Sunder; is it ambient, classical, avant garde, or electroacoustic? who knows...it is Lucid, it is beautiful and it fills me with joy..." (f.) |
| IDYLLS AND THE SECRET REMAIN OPUS ZINE (DECEMBER 2000) "Of all of the bands that I listen to with any regularity, Lucid is by far the most enigmatic and mysterious. I know basically nothing about this band, other than the names of the people in it and what they play. Other than that, I’m in the dark. Everything about this band just adds to the overall fascination I have with this band. The band name, the album title, the titles of the songs, the sleeve art (what little there is), everything. One of the things that I found most fascinating with this album, as well as their first, was the ability of Lucid’s music to actually take you somewhere. I’m not talking about an emotional rollercoaster, or evocative words. I mean, the ability to actually make a scene, or set a tone that actually makes you see something. In this way, Lucid is very cinematic. A lot of times, I think I’m listening to the recording of some old impressionistic, Lovecraftian film. Lucid’s music is the ultimate expression of the word “illusory.” On “Who Listen,” you’re standing in a flowered field with bees buzzing around you while, off in the hazy distance, church bells chime out a haunting melody; suddenly, out of nowhere, a man’ s sad groans can be heard, only to be cut off. “The Reverberation Of His Day” starts out with what sounds like a walk through a forest at dusk, complete with the howls of some lupine creature. But suddenly, you’re wading in some underground river; water drips around you, unseen creatures splash and glide through the black waters, and echoing, wavering tones sound all around you until the final end when those unseen creatures leap out. Musically, I could compare Lucid to bands like His Name Is Alive, Lovesliescrushing, and This Mortal Coil. And even though I love those bands dearly, Lucid’s music puts all of these artists to shame. They seem like mere amateurs compared to Lucid’s ability to manipulate and create sound and atmosphere. One of the things that first struck me about Lucid’s music are the brevity of the songs. Most are under 3 minutes, all are under 4. At first, I thought that might be a bad thing. But Lucid’s music pays no attention to time constraints. In 2 minutes, Lucid is able to create a mood just as, or even more effective and daunting than some 20 minute dark-ambient pieces. With their second album, Lucid delivers more of the same eerie, spooky, captivating sounds that were on their debut album, “Baby Labyrinthian.” Only this time, “Idylls…” seems to have a slightly darker and more disturbing nature underneath the odd sounds, source recordings, and themes that characterize Lucid’s music. But beneath all of the minimalism and serenity, all of the things you can put words to, there creeps a real uneasiness, a trembling apprehension. “Ephemeral Moon Dream” places you in the middle of a forest while crickets, frogs, and unknown creatures sing and croak. Ominous tones, like the feeling you’re being watched made audible, and wavering female voices and drones feel your ears. It all dissolves into a reverbed and echoing cacaphony that will cover you in goosebumps. Even a pleasant-sounding piece like “Uncertain Whether,” with its soft guitar, wavering sonic washes, and childish vocals hide a certain apprehension. Once, when I was all alone in my house, I decided to put this CD on while I went to sleep. By the 7th track, I had to stop the CD player and stick in Seefeel because this CD was giving me some weird dreams. I’ve never had to do that with any of the other CDs I’ve listened to. That’s not to say that all of the music on the disc makes you feel like there’s someone looking over your shoulder. There’s a lot of pleasant music on this CD as well; the variety is just another testament to this group’s skill. “Swarming Sweet” sounds like an instrumental track off a Steve Scott album - gentle ethnic percussion, a gamelan-like melody, and cascades of crystalline sound loop together into something you wouldn’t mind hearing again and again. “Baptized In Memory” is a beautifully depressing piano piece, something to listen to over and over again in an empty room while staring at the rain outside. With this CD, you want to discuss each song in detail, simply because each song has so much detail in it. Lucid is the perfect combination of experimental music in my opinion. It’s conceptual and bizarre and otherworldly. But at the same time, it’s listenable and even moving. I don’t know where these people get their inspiration or opus, but I just hope they keep creating works of art like this one." (Jason Morehead) |
| IDYLLS AND THE SECRET REMAIN THE ROCKET (DECEMBER 1996) There is a mysterious intimacy to the music of Lucid that must be experienced in quiet, patient turns. Though I'd call Lucid 'difficult music', I would still include them in a world that has made a place for the likes of John Cage, Pram, and the Cocteau Twins. Lucid's music - they seem only barely concerned with constructing anything like a song - is full of interesting corners, filigreed detail, and boxes that, when opened, just grow more and more curious. Indeed, if anything, listening to this remarkable LP (full of buzzing bees, half dreamed melodies, creaking doors, and Cheshire Cats) is like stepping through the looking glass. Lucid make music that is part hallucination, part daydream, part memory. They are romantic, listful, haunting, delicate, and slightly, elegantly macabre. So full and convincing is their world, that it's easy to forget that this disc is even on. It seems, all too strangely, like the sounds, words, noises falling through your brain, into your heart. A strange and entirely compelling experience. (S. Duda) |
| IDYLLS AND THE SECRET REMAIN ALTERNATIVE PRESS (APRIL 1997) Etudes for watchsprings, wrenches, and human voices distance Lucid from the 4ADemented masses and Projekt's 'gothique' absurdists. Uncomfortably simple musings such as "One Of The Clearly" conceal startling depths: two-note piano chords and concrete indercurrents refract into accreted layers of weightless density. Galloping rhythms quickly fragment into tape-loop distractions ('The Heady Elemental') or arise spontaneously from static beehive drones ('Swarming Sweet'). Idylls challenges listeners to abandon preconceptions and to accept the band's own fascinating terms. Perhaps the audience that opened it's doors to Rachel's and His Name Is Alive will welcome the exquisite poetry of Idylls. (Gil Gershman) |
| BABY LABYRINTHIAN THE WIRE (DECEMBER 1994) 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) |
| BABY LABYRINTHIAN THE BIG TAKEOVER Issue 38 (1995) 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) |
| BABY LABYRINTHIAN PANDEMONIUM (JUNE 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) |
| BABY LABYRINTHIAN ALTERNATIVE PRESS (MARCH 1996) 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) |
| BABY LABYRINTHIAN OPUS ZINE (DECEMBER 2000) Although I’ve known about this album for a long time, it’s only been recently that I was able to acquire it. And I’ve found this to be one of the more compelling releases that I’ve recently purchased. What Lucid is able to do in the 75 minutes of this CD is create some of most interesting experimental ambience I’ve ever heard. Distant radio transmissions combine with the creakings and groanings of old ships, spacey strings and bells compete with baby-like voices, and ghostly rhythms provide an undercurrent for a very spooky, yet comforting collection of songs. Of everything I own, I could most easily compare this to His Name Is Alive’s “Home Is In Your Head.” However, Lucid completely latches onto the experimental side of HNIA’s interesting blend of experimental noise and pop music. At times, I hear Lovesliescrushing at their mellowest and most distant times, or Flying Saucer Attacks less noisy meanderings. However, Lucid really has a sound all their own, and they use everything, including the kitchen sink and the dirty dishes inside, for their compositions. There’s a minimalist ethic here, but one that’s weaved so deftly that it’s hardly noticeable; in other words, a lot happens within the music here, but it’s so quiet and understated that if you aren’t paying attention, you’ll miss it. It’s not uncommon to hear samples of songbirds and what sounds like pedestrians and passing traffic mixed in with soft acoustic guitars, electronics, and sparse drumbeats. There are so many sounds present on this recording, and many that I can’t even begin to identify. And everything is covered in echo and reverb and other effects to give it a very distant, intangible, and spectral sense. Above it all glides the voices. Two female vocalists are credited, Rebecca Bird and Melody Rockwell. Their vocals are delivered in soft, haunting whispers that are echoed and fuzzed out until they sound like distant A.M. radio transmissions coming in at 2:30 in the morning. Or maybe like the ghosts in your house trying to communicate with you through an ancient victrola. The effect is often quite unsettling, like on “Doomedah,” where the vocalist softly repeats that word over songbirds and distant churchbells. But I don’t find it displeasing at all. In fact, it also sounds quite comforting. This album hints at the point where you lie between sleeping and waking, where you can just start to sense the real world, but where you’re still aware of the subconscious goings-on of your mind. Lucid’s music doesn’t seem to paint any pictures of the real world, but rather pictures of that world while your still half-asleep and of your dreams as they slowly fade away in the minutes after waking up. Song titles like “Of The Miniscule Incubus,” “Mine On I And Mirror The Of Side Your On You,” “Bend And Wither Like A Flame,” and “Entrust Not In The Illusory” just add to this flavor. At 31 tracks and almost 75 minutes of material, there’s bound to be some less than stellar material that bogs one down, but the interest I had in this album far outweighs any downside. With each track clocking in under 4 minutes, the album seems composed of fragments, mere pieces of songs, often too short for you to latch onto. Sometimes the songs cut short too suddenly, it seems. Other times, they seem to drag on forever. If you don’t like experimental music or music that shuns your regular pop music mindsets, stay faraway from this album. “Baby Labyrinthian” is an incredible example of using environmental recordings, traditional instruments, electronics, and the human voice to create illusory and dreamy recordings. This is an album that I expect I’ll be scrutinizing for some time to come. (Jason Morehead) |
| BABY LABYRINTHIAN ALL MUSIC GUIDE (2000) 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) |
