Download: Bobb Bruno “Dreamt On”

(from Dreamt On EP out now on Vosotros.)

I don’t know if Bobb Bruno realizes it, but he’s the Bizarro-World Kim Fowley—an unwitting svengali who’s produced girl bands and wrote or played songs on countless other bands’ albums, but whose utter lack of self-promotion almost hints that he secretly is horrified of his own project Making It Big. This EP, however, shows that he’s not horrified of taking what once was a rather incestuous set of sounds (all over the map sonically, but united by a drum-pad/sample technique that remained largely unchanged for years) and turning that circle into an arc. This multi-instrumentalist has always been comfortable being a bridge for other people’s talents, but Dreamt On shows Bobb finally crossing that bridge himself, moving his talents in a direction where the grass just may be greener. And that direction? We might call it “Bruno in Slumberland,” more dreamlike than ever before, trance-y and trip-hoppy in a way that we’ve kinda heard on albums by guys like Daedelus and Nobody. But there’s a demonic twist here, the best example being “Fairy Tale Ending,” a song more akin to Blue Beard than Sleeping Beauty. It starts off with vibes and synths and drum taps and stunningly beautiful (and, whoa, actually tasteful) Hawaiian guitar by Nels Cline. But then suddenly the tempo shifts, notes modulate strangely, and now we’re in a weird dirgy Coraline world where guitar notes gets scratched back and forth angrily, and then overblown vibrato noise and hard slow snare beats come in and announce that IN CASE YOU FORGOT, THIS IS A FUCKING BOBB BRUNO RECORD!!! By the end, it’s like the Beach Boys’ “Automatic” got pressed into Willy Wonka’s bubble machine, and when we finally get dumped into the next song, “14K,” a shockingly soft encroachment on D. Boone’s “History Lesson, Part 2” territory, we feel like we just went down the chute at Splash Mountain and need to go pick up our photo. Good stuff indeed, Brer Bunny! More of this, please.

—Dan Collins

Bobb Bruno Dreamt On EP out now on Vosotros.