Image: Time For Dreams – supplied.
Author: Melody Menu
Melbourne duo Time For Dreams are a study in eclectic influences: meditations on negative space and ambient bass grooves fluctuate and change, interspersed with searing guitar sounds and Amanda Roff’s commanding vocals. It’s slow-burning and danceable, yet unorthodoxly punk.
Made up of Tom Carlyon of The Devastations and Standish/Carlyon, and Amanda Roff of Harmony, the pair’s approach to songwriting is playful yet exceedingly professional; a product of conflicting ideas and themes, or what Roff describes as ‘desperately trying to fit every song you have ever loved into the one project, like trying to jam heaps of outfits into a small suitcase and never really getting it shut.’ The resulting sound is kaleidoscopic: constantly shifting and becoming.
New on the horizon is the group’s forthcoming In Time Remixes EP, a creative celebration of the group’s debut offering In Time in 2017. Roff describes the remixing process as luxurious, a way in which to ‘reach out to producers you really admire and let them destroy and re-make your songs. You work hard to get a song to a certain point, then you play it a lot and it becomes solidified. Getting it re-mixed is like giving it away and getting it back all shimmery and full of potential again.’
The EP features the likes of sound artists Various Asses, Geryon and Simon J Karis, with the first single coming from electronic producer Dream Kit, AKA Declan Kelly, for whom the remix was a privilege ‘after thrashing the album when it came out.’ Under Kelly’s hand, the ‘Come With Me’ remix of original track ‘Move It’ is a ghostly listen, upping the tempo and emphasising the bare bones of the song with syncopated percussion to make for a shining and skeletal dance number.
Kelly says of the track: ‘I love the remix process; I enjoy the constraint of having to incorporate certain elements as opposed to the blank canvas of ultimate possibility with original compositions. It’s quite intimate to have access to the individual parts of a song and get the opportunity to think about how you could reimagine or re-contextualise them into a new song. I love how dense Time For Dreams’ songs are, but for this remix, I wanted to see how sparse I could make the song while still giving it an urgent propulsion and really bring Amanda’s vocal into the front of the track.’
For Roff and Carlyon, the remixes have breathed new life into their much-loved material, re-energising the original tracks and renewing inspiration: ‘You discover potential in songs that you had stopped being able to hear. Directions that are emphasised in a re-mix basically remind you of what you were trying to do in the first place and get you excited about making new work.’
In Time Remixes is out Friday December 14 through It Records, along with a re-press of In Time.
Melody Menu 