In late 2020 Dutch label Music From Memory released Virtual Dreams, a triple vinyl/ download album (with different tracks on the two different releases). Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House And Techno Age , 1993- 1997 took up residence on my turntable, six sides of vinyl that featured ambient techno from a slew of electronic artists including Richard H. Kirk, The Primitive Painter, LFO, Bedouin Ascent, Dubtribe Sound System, MLO, Pulusha and LA Synthesis. The compilers did a superb job, selecting and sequencing the lost, the obscure and the beautiful, presenting the futuristic music of the mid- 90s in such a way that it sounded like a cohesive album and utterly fresh and weirdly contemporary. It was a sound, as they said, that came from the chill out rooms, from the spaces next to the rooms where everyone was dancing, where people wanted to slow down and contemplate/ come down. 'Ambient in this new age now though had sharper teeth', the sleeve notes said, 'than in Brian Eno's keynote text Music For Airports, instead the sounds here the mode of transport rather than the backdrop.'
Virtual Dreams is futuristic, machine music made by humans with emotions, with new technology at their disposal and looking upwards to space, outer pace and sci fi and a cyborg inner space too. It's a perfect various artists compilation album. The digital version of Virtual Dreams is here.
This is Levitation by The Primitive Painter- glassy synths, warm pattering drum pads, and a familiar female vocal sample, all bound together by some unearthly robotics. The Primitive Painter were Roman Flugel and Jorn Elling Wuttke, and yes, they named themselves after the 1985 indie classic by Felt.
Music From Memory are about to release a second volume of Virtual Dreams, this one shifting their ambient techno focus to Japan in the same 1993- 1999 time period, where in the clubs of 1990s Japan ambient- techno went by the name of 'listening techno'. Rob wrote a great review at Ban Ban Ton Ton this week with some of the tracks up to listen to- you can read it here. Virtual Dreams II is at Bandcamp.
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