Vienna, Austria trio Lucy Dreams flesh out a concept album about humanity’s ascent into a fifth dimension, where both intuition and technology fuse together across 10 very diverse songs that are cosmic and interconnected. The band holed themselves up in alpine hut for a weeklong retreat to capture this effort, where cozy analog and futuristic digital creativity are strung together across the sophomore record.
“You, As In Universalism” opens with harmonic waves of cinematic ideas that are warm, graceful and full of manipulated singing. “Stars” then follows and is beat driven with a dance floor energy via the soulful singing and light buzzing, and “Motor” carries an alt-pop spirit that’s infectious and animated.
The middle spot belongs to “Calore,” where dense moments and dreaminess are met with exploratory electronic prowess, while “To Ava” will get your body moving to the lively energy and rhythmic appeal that’s destined for the dance floor. “Code To My Mind,” the album’s best, then flirts with post-punk nods thanks to the sleek delivery and sonic playfulness.
“Tempo” and “Be Here Now” exit the listen. The former finds itself in synth-pop territory that benefits from the lush and colorful delivery, and the latter comes with some sci-fi gestures that illuminate the soft singing and rhythmic electronica.
Lucy Dreams consists of members Zero, One (real names David Reiterer and Philipp Pruckl) and artificial member Lucy, which is an active, specialized digital effect system. Together they deliver a message about a future for humans and machines to co-exist and evolve together. They describe their formula as SonicWaveArtPop, which encompasses alt-rock, dream-pop, synth-rock, New Wave, prog-rock, ’80s post-punk and art-rock into a really unique and enlightening experience for the listener that’s the musical equivalent of neon and retro-futurist in scope.