Dreamtime Soul

What is dreamtime soul?

In the book Retromania, Simon Reynolds explains that DJ-collectors invent new post-hoc genres to give their collections relevance. It's not 50p junk records, it's actually fuzzy felt folk!

I find my taste falls between the genre cracks, chasing certain kinds of feeling. Anyway last year i lost my heart to a man passing through town with stories of the early days of disco, but on the day of our date i was abruptly confined to bed with a simultaneous throat infection, UTI, sunstroke and starvation. There was little to do except daydream and listen to records. I tried What's Going On and as i came to the final few minutes, the song rolled on into eternity it suddenly occured to me that i might be dying and that my breathing had stopped, and that feeling went on forever too.

i pulled myself away from that warm dark feeling. unbound my chest and immediately vomited. i hear differently now, sounds from the beyond at the edges of the day.

The term 'psychedelic soul' refers to songs reflecting the political consciousness of the 60s; by doing so, it squats perhaps the most evocative term for soul with a certain dreamlike, delirious mood. 'Progressive soul' is experimental - often jazzy - but by its nature, experiments can be of many kinds and moods. Smooth, lovemaking soul tends towards the saccharine - but true ecstasy is dark, not always comfortable, a seduction of both awe and terror. These songs leave you relaxed, not as in calm but as opened up. Early disco sought out those longer soul songs with time to sink into a deep, hypnotic grooviness, but disco in and of itself selects for faster BPMs and for dancing, not for daydreaming.

Dreamtime soul is smooth grooves for passing out to, dissolving into other worlds. It responds to an experimental moment in what soul could be, pushing the boundaries of the form with lush, multi-tracked disorientation, and voices disappearing into the sonic wash. It's the cosmic love vibration: the coming together of the erotic, the conscious, and the aesthetic connecting everyone and everything. It is the bliss and the billowing.

This collection is expanding as slowly as it needs to, to carve out this groove as distinct from all the others. I think Barry White probably has one - likely, only one. What I'm finding is these artists have many good songs, many different textures, but dreamtime soul comes to pass when influences that exist across their whole careers in different sunlight-through-the-trees shade-scatterings coming together in just this way, an artistic moment. You'll notice a very narrow date range at present, apt for a liminal sound that isn't quite anything, but is part of everything becoming.

if you have recs, my discord is starbright.cobweb.

Some individual songs

• 1970 - The Look of Love/Ike's Mood I - Isaac Hayes
• 1971 - Inner City Blues - Marvin Gaye
• 1972 - Girl You Need A Change of Mind - Eddie Kendricks

On the Borderline

• 1970 - Something - Isaac Hayes
• 1972 - Dancing Girl - Terry Callier
  • just. it doesn't quite fit the sound palette, but it does have that touch of the cosmic in the lyrics, that tidal fluttering between the erotic, the conscious and the vast. i think this song, in some ways, best embodies the idea of it, without necessarily nailing the sound. It is (like Come To My Garden) produced by the wonderful Charles Stepney, who I think is going to be an important touchstone for the sound.
• 1974 - Summer Breeze - the Main Ingredient