Sweet Dreams by Illusion of Safety

ILLUSION OF SAFETY started in Chicago almost 30 years ago with their vision of dark and morbid atmospheric industrial music and soon became one of the inventors of what was then called 'Ambient Industrial', the marriage of these two very different styles & approaches. Since then, IOS never failed to surprise their listeners, going through many musical changes with various live members using elements of improvisation, electro-acoustic music,sound collages, sublime drones (especially in the '90s before it became a well-known notion) and noise (and only imagine that JIM O'ROURKE started his career as the 19-year old live guitarist of ILLUSION OF SAFETY!). We are very happy IOS (at this time mastermind DANIEL BURKE only) recorded pieces for our special concept 10" series that again mark a very unexpected change: 'SWEET DREAMS' is an almost 'psychedelic' record, using many incredible acousmatic sounds deriving from field recordings, instrumental sources (such as acoustic guitars) and synths, which build together repetitive pulsing patterns and hypno-loops that suck you in. But IOS wouldn't be IOS if it weren't for surprising breaks, cut-ups, crackling sounds and other interferences.... To us, this sounds like '70s psych-space tunes transformed by today's experimental & compositional consciousness.. Three pieces, 22+ mins, mastered by THOMAS DIMUZIO, 500 copies pressed on beautiful and unique 3-colour (green, blue and white) vinyl and with artwork by Berlin-based designer TILMANN BENNINGHAUS.

Here's a perfect fit for the Drone Records imprint Subtantian Innominata. Illusion Of Safety is the long-running post-industrial project revolving around Chicago's Dan Burke. Over the past 30 years, he and his band of malcontents have created an amazing, if under-appreciated catalogue of psychologically grim soundtracks, brutal collages, and sublime dronemuzik, with most of the recordings operating on divergent aesthetic paths. On Sweet Dreams, Illusion Of Safety pushes towards an organic melancholy through some downright beautiful passages for guitar and synth explorations that recalls the Connie Plank haze cast upon Harmonia and Cluster back in the day. Yet, Burke detours from the kosmische ethos by snapping concise samples of earthen crunch along Robert Hampson-esque grids with loosened strumming dissolving the title track into a plaintive call and response of the technological and the roughhewn. "Unresolved" treats the guitar with more of a Tim Hecker sensibility for a digitally savvy blissout, followed up on the flipside with the hypnotic and lovely "Always Somewhere Else" whose motorik underbelly gradually levitates through an oscillating sequence of synths, with brightly toned guitar plucks gradually revolving into focus next to celestial choral synths. Quite a surprise from Illusion Of Safety, but one we're delighted to encounter.-aquarius records

Since 1983, Burke and his many conspirators under the IOS banner have over the course of 40+ releases traversed most every facet of the avant sound plane, from early industrial pop deconstruction to blindingly minimal sound art to densely surreal found-sound collage, creating uneasy music that is dense and dystopian and yet also beautiful.

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