Somnium

After a couple albums of relaxed chamber pop built around baroque instrumentation and gently psychedelic songcraft, Jacco Gardner did some drastic renovations on his third album, Somnium. In the three years between records, Gardner relocated to Lisbon and found himself enmeshed in reading old science fiction novels and pondering the cosmos as he wandered around his new city of residence. These cerebral pursuits led him to some musical exploration. Inspired by old-school synth boffins like Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno, the record is completely instrumental and vintage electronics take a larger role, playing the main melodies and providing texture. They combine with the more organic elements of his past records, like crafty basslines and understated drums, to create a spacy, psychedelic hybrid sound. It may sound like a huge departure, because it is. The jump from the previous album to this one feels like traveling from one planet to another, with only Gardner's steady hand at the controls to keep the ship on course. Like on his past work, the production is crisp and finely layered and the arrangements are obviously the work of someone who has studied at the feet of the masters. What used to drag his songs down a little were the sometimes meandering and slight melodies and lyrics. No lyrics here, so that's not a problem. The shift in approach seems to have given Gardner the little nudge he needed to worry more about making songs that have immediate hooks; tracks like "Levania" and "Volva" have some cinematic majesty, "Utopos" and "Privolva" tap into the same kind of loopy space-age pop that Plone did, and even the songs that are relatively formless, like the heavily ambient "Rising" and the outer-space ballad "Pale Blue Dot," don't float away into the ether thanks to the focus Gardner exhibits throughout. He rarely if ever shifts into autopilot, which it felt like he did sometimes on the first two albums, but instead sounds fully committed to each synth burble, whooshing pad, and ghostly oscillation. It seems that Gardner has found his calling as a psychedelic spaceman, and Somnium is a laid-back delight that's a perfect soundtrack for inner flights and star-filled nights alike. ~ Tim Sendra