Known for his collaborations with Nico, John Cale, and Pere Ubu (where he serves as an auxiliary member) Graham “Dids” Dowdall has been making music for decades, and his latest under the pseudonym Gagarin, the forthcoming full-length Aoticp, continues the artist’s experimentation in the electronic realm. The humming, lurching “Feral Dreams” is a great indication of what you can expect to hear on its eleven tracks, a combination of hypnotic ambient electronica and thrumming, skittering percussion, vague in form save for the skeletal structure of the beats. Part classic electronic, part futuristic.
“‘Feral’ Dreams is an attempt to play with some of the soundworld of old techno alongside more avant and orchestral elements,” Dowdall tells PopMatters. “It’s the first track I’ve done for a long with any four on the floor though I later broke that up with some more live drumming and tried to de-focus the dance music vibes into a more glitched out bass driven later section ‘til it falls apart completely at the end. The title draws on that idea of ‘Feral’ — something domesticated that is growing back to the wild and in some way the track kind of does that too.”
Aoticp will be released this month on GEO Records.