Ilyas Ahmed has spent nearly two decades trudging through the murkiest sonic territories with patient consideration on his own, as a full time member of Grails, and together with the likes of Liz Harris (Grouper), Golden Retriever, and most recently Jefre Cantu-Ledesma on their 2021 collaborative LP 'You Can See Your Own Way Out'. Across a string of exquisite releases on Root Strata, Immune, Digitalis, and Time-Lag, the Pakistan-born, Portland, Oregon-based musician has spread out a tapestry of spectacular solitude, somewhere between off-kilter folk and grimly contemporary ambient music. Now, Ahmed returns to Geographic North with 'A Dream of Another', a spiritual successor to the distantly seething 'Behold Killers' (2019 via Geographic North) and his most hallucinatory and benevolently bereft record to date. Here, Ahmed sets out a new, more oblique path than ever before, eschewing lyrics and vocals, incorporating a solemn drum machine, and charting a series of waking dreams. The end result is a masterful LP written, recorded, and performed entirely by Ahmed, mastered by Chuck Johnson, and continues the excruciatingly beautiful, pained traditions of somber avant-melodists like Vini Reilly and Loren Connors.
Ahmed describes the progression of his work, culminating with 'A Dream of Another' : “The focus of my solo work has become existing at the nexus of form and formlessness. Like an overheard conversation or found object, an exposed exoskeleton of the idea of what an album is. A middle ground where each impulse is allowed and given equal space. Like a hazy memory of a faded picture. These pieces exist like the point waves retreat from the shore.”
Opener “Etched in Smoke” offers a stoic facade that belies a seemingly bottomless breadth of emotion. Dread is in the air, but its source is nowhere to be found. The sense is much like driving the wrong direction down a one-way street in an abandoned, one-light town. You turn down a shadowy corner only to meet “Nasty Man”, a doomed and grime covered figure who subtly hints at a tragic and unbelievably bewitched backstory. The anathematized journey continues on “Twice the Memory”, a subdued meditation that shimmers in a fog of echoing woe and a modicum of hope for good measure.
The haze dissipates with “Little Devil,” revealing a balmy full moon flecked with a sweet and shuffling drum machine loop. It’s a nihilistic waltz that perfectly soundtracks your own personal, comfortable nightmare. “Waves” invites a chorus of apparition-like melodies that rise and dissipate like dust in a mausoleum, simultaneously pregnant with pause and eerily vacant. “A Dream of Something,” the album’s magnum opus, is a glorious, wayfaring epic of wide-eyed nonchalance. ECM-worthy guitar tones speck a barren landscape at dawn, waking and retreating into the dim glow. “Imagine There” closes things out with elegance and forlorn optimism.
Ultimately, 'A Dream of Another" reveals Ahmed as a consummate composer of minimalist mantras and slow motion sonatas.
