Transmission0

Following their 2004 debut 0 and a contract with Candlelight, Holland’s texture-core enthusiasts Transmission0 offer their sophomore mind-expansion instalment, Memory of a Dream. In the Isis/Cult of Luna sweepstakes, this band lean toward the variety side, along with the Ocean and Callisto, and opening track "Cocoon” serves as a heuristic springboard to the rest of the album. "Condor” and "Paracas” feature layered guitars, keys and palpable tides of sound that slowly crescendo, while "Dream 1” and "Fragments” take a long draught of Tiamat’s Wildhoney before building their respective Robert Fripp-like soundscapes. The clean vocals of guitarist Mischa van Rodijnen recall Katatonia’s Jonas Renske, complementing the rough-hewn growl of keyboardist Michiel van der Avoird (heard principally in the piano-driven "Dying Light”). The glistening guitar rasp of "Dreams 2” evokes Phantoms-era the Fixx and beneath the stratified assault of "Damn Machines” lay the back-up vocals of Today is the Day’s Steve Austin. Disappearer-like instrumental "UnREM” ebbs and flows through endless inlets of a larger sound source, and 11-minute marathon "Token” spotlights van Rodijnen and van der Avoird’s best vocal interplay on record. Sleekly flooding the senses, Memory of a Dream is yet another masterpiece from Transmission0, who pay just as much attention to their musical atmospheres as they do to their impending storms.