DreamState (Bristol)

Left to grow its own sub-state of music styles the musicians of Bristol have organically and stylishly leaked their dreamy audio output through the cracks and all in their own sweet time. Located in the West Country of England Bristol has got itself into a right state (not quite a city, village or county) with audio ley lines, lost travellers and haunted relics all messing with the music.

Tonight's specially selected amalgamation of acts/solo-ists/artists/filmakers/DJs and musicians celebrates this Bristol state of dream. Colston Hall will be hosting a starry selection of music alchemists. Some that live in this unfair city, some that have been strongly influenced by it (and have moved on) and in true dream style some visitors that have nothing to do with it but appear with their own dream logic (and music).

Bristol has produced some memorable and mesmerizing musical dreamers. A certain nightime liquidness can be heard in Bristol's best musicians, Bristol has produced a homegrown music that walks through walls/genres. Hip Hop is melted into haunted post-classical melancholia. The discordance is ripped from Drum & Bass and surreally layed into Folk..its soul rhymes getting well and truly soiled. Rock is mythically free associated with travels into the Druid country. Late night poetry walks amongst Clifton verdant streets descend into Stokes Croft jazz mash ups. Cloudy visions of political correctness are interweaved with personal paranoid guilt trips. Artists are left alone and have the time to dream strange wonderful dreams...that's DreamState (Bristol).

GRAVENHURST (Warp) is a poet of the inner city blues, reds and turquoises, a harnesser of blissed-out feedback and literary dark thought. He is Bristol's Nick Drake via William Burroughs, a explorer of eerie undercurrents via glorious songs, he drenches everything into something else and so has his own particular state of being. Like Mark Stewart on indie downers. Out there on his own.

ES (Fonal) lives and works near the forests of Tampere, Finland. He is a musician and film-maker and also runs the Fonal label. Patchwork psychedelia, magical realism, found sounds and devotional song all combine. His music is ALL AT ONCE... small and detailed, widescreen and gothic, childlike tender and adult wild but recently he is prone to move the listener into warm, blissed out dream states.

JAMES BREWSTER aka MOLE HARNESS is waves and waves of sublimely sequenced acoustica / electronica. Music that is ...magisterial, heavenly, and ultimately poignant—that invites and rewards surrender" Textura. Currently living in Malmö, Sweden, he comes from a key Bristol sub-scene of electronic musicians that sprang up in the early noughties around the Clean Cut, Float labels that some how messed a love of Jim O'Rouke guitar-tronics with Breakcore hyper detailia and the more blissed out Leaf/Anticon vibes.

CHRIS FORSYTH comes here via the USA has both a raw power and intuitive delicacy to his amazing solo guitar playing. He is a founding member (along with Jaime Fennelly and Fritz Welch) of the iconoclastic American group Peeesseye, a transcontinental amalgam of minimalist rock, noise, folk, drone, psych, improv, sound poetry, and absurdity that has produced seven CDs, one 7-inch, over 145 concerts in Europe and the US, and untold blown minds since forming in 2002. With increasing frequency, he performs solo on both electric and acoustic 6- and 12-string guitars.

BALKY MULE (FatCat) is Sam Jones and he makes easy, breezy and woozy English songs that just charm. Now the the story behind the Mule for those that are unfamiliar with one of Bristol's wandering wonders is this: Sam has been living and recording in Australia for the last few years, before that he was playing in numerous bands in his hometown, including Movietone and Crescent (alongside his bandleader brother, Matt), Flying Saucer Attack, Minotaur Shock, and Third Eye Foundation. NOW you see/hear his connection with the dream-music. So he has a peerless West Country musical history. His new album is very homespun, full of Ray Davies like observations, naturally dry sounding instrumentation and electronics with slow bouncing rhythms (kind of Beck-like in places) and weirdly catchy refrains. 'The Length of the Rail' is out now.

HEADFALL are connected like a wild dream seguing into weird real life. A Bristol based act who make gloriously outsider sounds via the deconstruction of the song. This is a suitably rare performance for this enigmatic act, longtime favourites of Qu Junktions who have connections to Crescent, Corey Orbisions and Francois. Lo-fi hiss and crackle, strung out instrumentals, edged out spoken word, and deep space grooves make this band special. Team Brick's favourite band don't you know.

SILVER PYRE is a world explorer but really he like surfing the backroads of the west country to mythical effect. Recently relocating to Bristol, Silve Pyre forges a sound from the depths of his native rural Somerset. Blending richly crackling textures with yearning vocals, his music echoes its rugged coastline, legendary free parties and the oppressive pulse of the nuclear power station. Playing in the Pyre now is the famous scientist to the stars and dreamer of analogue noise..Mr Tom Bugs. He drums.

IGNATZ beams in blues from another planet (well Belgium is his base), incorporating detuned guitar, slap back echo, howling vocals and swathes of feedback. Otherworldly psychedelic/noise music in which the ghosts of Mississippi John Hurt, Dead C and Kevin Shields all figure.

A lo-fi fetishist who used to put tapes out in the rain as a child to hear the effects of decomposition, he sings like a vintage '78, crackly and distant, over an acoustic guitar accompaniment that's spat out and decimated live by his bank of samplers and pedals. The results are moving, melancholic and totally out there.

ICE BIRD SPIRAL inhabit a West Country Interzone somewhere between psychedelic-noise and old school Surrealism, where found-sound and automatic writing co-exist with rural car-boot mysticism. The band are currently a 9-piece, but the other 7 are either dead or don't exist. Played with Sunburned. Who knows.

MILKY WAY has been DJIng and hosting shed/pub and art gallery parties for a while. He is the dreamer of dreams and maker of Music (with Arctic Circle) and maybe a Acid House set more like Motown Soul via a cassette player.

DAVID HOPKINSON concocts special, super detailed art pieces and sometimes Music. Recently seen in the Beardyman crew. Tonight he provides us with a set of dreamstate music for dancing.