Dreamsploitation, plundering the dreams of past eras, is Chuck Blazevic, a self aware connoisseur music vulture. It is a fair distance from John Oswald’ Plunderphonics concepts and, beyond the titling (being perhaps an ironic reworking of Blaxploitation), with seemingly no political point scoring here, is rather ‘scoring’ in a compositional sense. Sampling here, acts as instrument for orchestration and arrangement, precise micro-samples arranged, overlapping into a lively display akin to 1960’s pop arrangers and film composers with whom he has an evident obsession. Blazevic utilises a Monome grid box sample cutting and re-arrangement tool in conjunction with a laptop and the instrument of sampling, having developed far beyond the tape splice and loop has become a sophisticated machine only too evident in the work.
As the focal point of sampling technique is no longer the fore grounded question, Blazevic concentrates on tonal quality, melody, precision in beat arrangement and holding together a multilayered complex form without the need for quirky attention grabbing sound bytes. To say it is classically beautiful is to say nothing, yet this is the realm which such words attach to sound structures like Dreamsploitation. Where the platonic dream of ideal form and all the repositioning of the dream/ideal throughout the ages have lead to a form of tyranny, it is a tyranny that we are only too willingly to succumb. ‘Give me beauty or give me death’, I know one is inevitable but could it come with a lullingly beautiful soundtrack?
Listening to the album, and I will not separate tracks for analysis as this seemingly goes against the grain of listening to such a text, is like turning a corner from a street lined with protesters complaining about the destruction of beauty to a brilliant little cul de sac of people consciously creating beautiful, light filled breezy works that reposition a person towards the world as a wonderful place.
Innerversitysound
