VIRTUAL DREAMS

Amsterdam basecamp MUSIC FROM MEMORY is delighted to be turning 50 with a special release: Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, 1993-1997
Virtual Dreams will delve into music produced during the 1990’s that redefined the boundaries of ‘Ambient’. This was music that explored the possibilities of Ambient music within a new setting, created for a world beyond dance floors but made very much with the pre and post-clubbing listener in mind.The concept of a ‘Chill-out’ room saw the light.Slowly young Techno and House producers themselves would become increasingly interested in developing a futuristic ‘Ambient’ soundtrack to a world beyond the thud of the main room.
The musicians were again exploring psychedelic, mind-altering and transcendental possibilities of music. And also, much as in the first Summer of Love, a psychedelic visual language would accompany the music. Now though the tracks would be accompanied by music videos, often utilising early CGI techniques, and they would look almost entirely to the future: envisioning technology, nature and humanity intertwined in a new Utopia. These were the Virtual Dreams of a new world.
Listening to Virtual Dreams makes for a blissful and tripped-out listening experience. In a certain sense all of the music here is functional - it’s just that the function in question is expanding the borders of the mind through whooshing atmospherics, burbling electronics and gently pulsating beats.