Customer Reviews

Dream House/Dedications to Flea

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Windy And Carl are one of those groups that I've managed to keep tabs on, despite not managing to review many of their releases on this site. In fact, the last (and only) album that I reviewed by them was their Portal full length, which is more or less their debut (a re-release of their early work). In the years since that time, the duo have refined their sound ever so slightly with each release, and when I heard that they were going to be putting out a limited EP earlier this year dedicated to their dog, I thought it would be a good time to re-discover them.

That release was their Dedications To Flea EP, which was the inaugural release in the Brainwashed handmade series, and hearing it made me glad that I decided to give them another chance. For those that didn't manage to pick up a copy of the limited EP, the group has included it along with The Dream House for a stunning double-dose of music. What you get with the release in total is four tracks and nearly eighty minutes of music split between two discs. The Dream House opens with "The Eternal Struggle," which mixes fuzzy, sustained keyboard chords with low, delayed guitar notes that seem to trickle down into all the right places. Running over thirty minutes, the track is all about slow evolution, but it's absolutely hypnotic, and sparse chimes and closing drone that finish the piece sound like the aural equivalent of clouds parting and letting the last few rays of sun through on a cold winter day.

"I Have Been Waiting To Hear Your Voice" combines more sustained, droning chords with ebow guitar and the result is another subtle piece that shifts in slight ways to slide inside your consciousness and make you feel that despite all the bad things going on, life might just go on. The aforementioned Dedications To Flea is slightly different in source sounds, but no less stunning, as the group mingles field recordings of their departed dog Flea with sparse, but completely lush, layered guitar playing. "Ode To A Dog" is downright uplifting, as overlapping tones dance and mingle with one another while "Sketch For Flea" seems to take a slightly darker turn, as if the entire life of the dog has been compressed into the two long tracks with the happy moments leading into the sad decline of health at the end.

Considering the duo hasn't released a full-length album for almost five years, this long release (split into two beautiful pieces) from Windy And Carl sounds like they haven't skipped a beat. Coupled with beautiful sleeve photography and detailed, heartfelt liner notes written by Windy herself, The Dream House definitely feels like more than just another ambient/drone piece without any thought put into it. If you haven't heard the group before and are interested, this might just be one of the best places to start.

(from almost cool music reviews)

IGLOOMAG.com's Review by Mat Propek

(01.06.06) It has been five years since the evocative drone sounds of Windy & Carl have hung suspended at the outer edge of your hearing. Releasing their new material in a double CD set, Kranky offers two lengthy EPs that are connected by their themes of memory and loss as well as the eternal hum of captive drones which haunt their work. The Dream House circles about ideas of death, loss and dreams while Dedications to Flea (released last year in a limited run by Brainwashed.com) are memorial works to their recently passed dog, Flea. Both EPs offer the listener vast opportunities for psychic expansion as the drones and stretched tones resonate in your cranium.

The Dream House -- two tracks: the thirty-minute "The Eternal Struggle" and the twelve-minute "I Have Been Waiting to Hear Your Voice" -- contains sprawling affairs of limitless drones and slowing evolving guitar tones. The first six minutes of "The Eternal Struggle" alone barely exists as anything other than an amorphous chord. Eventually the guitar floats in as if it has been gently rocked back and forth by the tide for so long that it has lost all shape and edge, gliding up onto a blank shoreline like a flat sheen of oil. After eleven minutes the opening chord has drained away until it is just an echo in the background while the guitar is layering waves of sound, trailing harmonic overtones in its wake like the long fingers of ancient jellyfish. Built as an elegy to the losses we suffer in our lives, the lengthy introspection inspired by the piece lifts one's melancholy into a space of reconciliation and hopefulness. Buoyed by the endless waves of sound, you feel supported and raised up towards a luminous center. You feel like the struggle may not be futile or endless and that, in the end, we all see again those we love and have lost. "The Eternal Struggle" is a piece meant for letting go and realizing the echoes of our lives are always there.

The second part of The Dream House is the tribute to Windy's mother: "I Have Been Waiting To Hear Your Voice." While the pellucid tones color the background, an evocative melody is bent out of worn guitar strings. The melody chases a hint of counterpoint (flute-like in its resonance) like two fuzzy will o' wisps dancing across a field of blurred flowers. Resembling a filmscape left out of focus for stylistic reasons, this track pushes you to internal reflection where your memories are more vivid, more distinct and comforting than the empty reality. Like "The Eternal Struggle," we are blissed with memory which can be triggered by the barest hint of sound and, in which, waves of emotion are wordless and structureless. You just feel them swallow you up and keep you safe.

The second half is their tribute to Flea, their sweet dog who recently passed from old age. "Ode To A Dog" is filled with the hint of sound effects as if someone left the dog in the studio while they were recording these endlessly looping melodies and you can hear him snuffling around in the waste-bin and chewing on the cables. "Sketch For Flea" has a more overt reminder of the dog as it is filled with a field recording of a walk with the dog, listening to him breathe and pant and slobber as he trots along. The music which wafts in behind the dog noises seems almost superfluous to the recording of the favorite animal but, like "Ode To A Dog," there is always music in the air when you are with those you love, or even when you are dreaming about them.

I saw Windy and Carl perform live in a small venue in front of a small audience several years ago in Pittsburgh, PA. All I thought about (when I was still able to think) was how big and beautiful their sound was, coming from two guitars and effects pedals. Soon I was off in some other place, their music trasnporting me somewhere "beyond".

"Dream House/Dedication to Flea" is a nicely priced double disc collection of four long songs displaying what the duo do best--dive deep into the listener's subconscious like some kind of worm to the core of an apple, burrying it's blue-hued tone washes into the deepest depths of your brain.

The first Disc, "Dream House" is a sort of musical dedication to a deceased loved one, but it's in no way sad or depressing, but rather uplifting, with the additional use of ambient synth tones, akin to Eno's best atmospheric work. "Dedication to Flea" has a more straightforward, even organic feel to the guitars, and a rhythmic pacing is more obvious on this disc, perhaps mimicking the walking of the very dog this cd was recorded for. It's the more interesting of the two as well, mainly for the use of their deceased pooch's panting, slurping, and walking sounds--a different kind of field recording.

This is sentimental music without being sappy. It's a refreshing breath of sincerity to, in a world dominated by ironic and fake music. The extensive liner notes, eloquently written by Windy, and the wonderful photography are a fine compliment to the music on this great, lengthy release. I've got lots of Windy and Carl cds and am never disappointed by any of their stuff. This album fosters the lost art of listening--deep listening. If you enjoy expansive, sprawling ambient music made with lots of love then don't hesitate to track this down and support the fine people who bring you these sounds.

No one can exist outside of a universe that remains unpaused. Even if time is an abstract, our bodies still age chronologically and are subject to cellular degredation and the ravages of genetic disorders or unchecked diseases. The only place where time feels suspended is within the context of REM sleep, deep within the confines of a dream, where it's not uncommon to return to locations or loved ones long left behind, to interact with them in a natural, unforced manner as if time never passed at all and altered our relationship to both that place and person.

Windy and Carl released "The Dream House" in 2005. A husband-and-wife recording team that typically anchor their music around guitar-based drones that are heavily processed through a number of pedals on Carl's effect rack to create music sounding as if resonating fragments of crystal were being levitated in a centrifugal fashion or drones that are either infinitely, tonally expansive or distorted until they mimic the roar of the universe, their sound is unique enough to be easily identifiable, fleshed out by Windy's basslines, synthesized droning, and husky, breathy, sung-spoken vocals, tending heavily toward guitar-driven space-rock with ambient overtones.

"The Dream House" deconstructs their rich,elaborate sound to extremely simple, singular tones. This CD was recorded partially as a tribute to Windy's deceased mother, and is reflective of the sense of loss of and longing for the presence of a loved one. No heavily distorted drones or delayed, multiplicative fretwork here; things are kept stripped down on the opening track, "The Eternal Struggle", a thirty-minute cut similiar in glacial pace (though not format) of "Antarctica", the massive tone poem that begins their third release, perhaps indicative of the emotional endurance needed to recover from one of the most primal losses a person can suffer outside of the death of a spouse or child. "I Have Been Waiting To Hear Your Voice", while not characterized by their trademark levitational, shimmery drone, is nevertheless more substantive in composition, and its peaceful, mellow, meditative tone establishes a location where the universe can be paused, and reunions can occur on a plane of existence accessible to those still living.

"Ode To Flea", the second disc in this set, addresses the couple's recovery from the death of their dog Flea, who had been with Windy and Carl since the early days of their relationship. Once again, the music is as elementary as what they recorded for their "Antarctica" CD, though perhaps with a little more development than "Dream House", and interspersed with field recordings of Flea as he went about the business of just being a dog.

While meditative and to a large extent very tranquil, "The Dream House" and "Ode To Flea" are in my opinion for those who enjoy the elegance of drones that move in stasis, or Windy and Carl completists only. It's definitely not the access point I would choose to begin with the band; for that, grab "Drawing of Sound".

I really do not know what everyone is thinking. AMG loved it. The other people on here loved it. This is the most boring album I have ever heard. The first song is essentially someone holding down a key or two on the "strings" setting on a keyboard for 30 minutes with minimal change. The other tracks may add wind chimes or a dog being near a mic, but it is the same bunch of nothing as the first track. Call it subtle and brilliant all you want, but the only time I even bother to put this on is when I am going to sleep. I give it two stars because it is nice to fall asleep to, but really has no other applications. I honestly can't even listen to it.