Ambient: Bålsam - Dream Landscapes (2017)

71 / 100

Dream Landscapes sits in a quiet, introspective corner of Bålsam’s catalog, where field recordings, airy ambience, and subtle drone meet slow-shifting emotional cues.

I suppose there’s no harm in returning to Bålsam, even if the music can feel repetitive and monotonous at times. This time the focus is a 2017 release, Dream Landscapes, which took me a while to sketch out a review for. However, after looking into the meaning of páramo, mentioned by Bålsam in the Bandcamp description, I began to understand the imagery behind this album title.

“Creatures” opens the album with a tapestry of sounds—mainly birds and children—flowing through what seems to be running water. I interpret this as a dreamlike depiction of freedom and childhood nostalgia. The following tracks include pieces built on pulsing layers such as “The Ritual” and “Transformation,” then shift into something resembling ambient dub on “Turquoise Mountain” and “Sunset Over.” But the track with the smoothest and most fluid ambient waves is clearly “Inside the Aboriginal Womb of Our Mother Tree.”

The piano makes an exclusive and emotional appearance in “North,” while the remaining tracks deliver colder shades of ambient—like “Tiny Hill with Horns”, “Speaking Stones”, and some with sharper edges, for instance “Messenger” and “Barranquillo.” Meanwhile, the last two pieces, “On Cliffs” and “Avion,” are tinged with dark ambient/drone, evoking gusts of wind hitting the body and the hull of an airplane.

Because this album takes its time to reveal itself, there wasn’t much I could immediately draw from it. Still, aside from “Inside the Aboriginal Womb of Our Mother Tree” and “North,” the track “Triangle Garden” stands out as a fitting choice for fans of soft and pristine ambient like myself.