Overnight we have become entirely obsessed with Laura Dre’s concept album ‘Kyoto Dreams’. The album is not meant to be considered a follow up to her ‘Moving Spaces’ album – a regular sophomore album will arrive in 2022. This is very much a unique and stand alone piece and we have fallen under its spell.
The album documents the story of central character Rin – a woman “who lives without dreams and ambitions”. We are huge fans of Sayaka Murata’s ‘Convenience Store Woman’ novel , which we were sure must have influenced ‘Kyoto Dreams’ but a quick on line chat with Laura tells us otherwise (but we hope she now reads it and understands why we made the link!). The album tells Rin’s story in a sequenced order so it’s tricky to highlight a single track out of context (please listen to the whole thing in order through headphones, ideally at night, for a proper immersive experience) but ‘Lost In Transit’ gives you a good flavour of what to expect (could that track be a nod to our most beloved movie, ‘Lost In Translation’?). The album is largely instrumental although it is sprinkled with Japanese spoken word dialogue (the CD booklet has the narration in English as well as Japanese). It’s truly mesmerising.
If you can grab a CD there is to die for artwork and of course an obi strip.
Teases and Dares 