BrokenFist said:
I've found myself thoroughly enjoying dreamier sounding ambient and noise (and even metal for that matter) music lately. The Orb, Global Communication, Fennesz, Jesu, Pelican, etc. Any recommendations?
In terms of dreamy stuff with a bit of an edge, go for My Bloody Valentine's
Loveless, as well as Manual's
Isares EP. The latter is something that tends to get slept on (no pun intended) in my experience, but has some real beauty on there; be sure to check out the song called 'Wake'.
Weirdly, the first cLOUDDEAD full-length (or collection of singles or whatever it was) has a really dreamlike feel to it. Inbetween the bizarro rhymes and solvent-abuse beats, there are random swathes of gorgeous noise. Also on a Rap(esque) tip would be Doseone's album with Boom Bip.
For noisier stuff, Xinlisupreme are a pretty extreme end of the road for the Jesu aesthetic. I would normally recommend some Neurosis when people start talking about Pelican, but that might not be so apt in this situation. I might suggest a leap of faith into similar beauty-through-noise as Xinli with
Through Silver In Blood, which mixes uneasy, layered ambience with trancelike, repetitive, but very heavy, sequences. It's something of an alternate reality for Jesu's Justin Broadrick at that time, if he was a crusty hippy from the Bay Area.
Of more direct comparison to the current (and admittedly surprising) trend for beauty-Metal is
Oceanic by Isis, but you're most likely already familiar with that. I'll say Kayo Dot, then, as they represent the current logical conclusion of beauty within Metal. They spend most of their time sounding like an incredibly spaced-out Jeff Buckley. Get the debut,
Choirs Of The Eye, to begin with and see what you reckon.
Oh yeah, and be sure to get
Flood by Boris. An hour-long song divided into four tracks, it is really repetitive, mellow and potentially trancey (depending on how fantasy prone you are), with a very gradual build into heaviness for the conclusion.