Lukas Creswell-Rost - Go Dream

Go Dream is the debut of Englishman Lukas Creswell-Rost who relocated several years ago from Leeds to Berlin. One could be forgiven for expecting an album of blistering techno. Yet, although the album is crisply produced by Creswell-Rost himself, with a generous sense of atmosphere and an electronic musician’s attention to sound quality and detail, the music actually takes in a variety of influences. Prefab Sprout-esque sophisti-pop; pastoral British folk; proggy, distorted guitars; and sleek, urban synth-pop manage to coexist on this highly accomplished, slightly whimsical first effort from the talented Creswell-Rost, who also plays in post-rock trio The Pattern Theory.

When an album references Yngwie Malmsteen’s “release the fury” incident and George Costanza, and features the lyric “I stole your thunder with an ass slap,” only to follow it with an actual “wh-tshh” slapping sound played over gently rambling folk, you know have something special on your hands. The lack of pretentiousness in Go Dream is refreshing. Creswell-Rost’s lyrics, though conversational and informal, often have a cynicism and sarcastic humor in them which are bolstered by the elegance of their delivery.

Take ‘Foreign Movies,’ for example: “Paint me in good light and use all the skills acquired from when you were at art school/ In those days you looked so cool/ but you’ve seen too many foreign movies/ You don’t stand a chance.” I’m not sure if he’s mocking his own experience and highbrow tastes (he did move to Berlin, after all) but his pessimism towards conventional ideas of success in the music industry comes through quite clearly on Go Dream.

Though the quality of the production would suggest that the album was recorded in a sleek, spacious Scandinavian studio, a visit to Creswell-Rost’s blog reveals that recording was a surprisingly shoestring affair, where noise control was achieved with sleeping bags and frequently thwarted by neighbourly sounds. At times pristine, decaying to absolute silence or quivering with gentle pads, at others, erupting in Animal Collective-style bouts of energetic drumming or searing guitar-lines, the album feels delicately balanced. One gets the impression that Creswell-Rost is both the deep-thinking, introspective guy at the party and the one who is liable to have the whole room cracking up with a well-timed joke.