Dream Tapes

Dream Tapes was produced by Jeff Emtman in collaboration with DMR007-Anonymous.

It features selected dreams from Jeff's project, Dream Tapes, in which 50 participants received tape recorders in the mail. Every morning for 3 weeks, they recorded all of their dreams as they woke up. The dreamers then mailed back the recorders.

Jeff says: 

The Dream Tapes Project is an ill-advised attempt to make meaning of dreams. While participants are waking up, they flip on a tape recorder and say everything they can remember from their sleep.

Currently inspiring Jeff inside the world of sound:

This album by Run Child Run has been playing in my mind as I drift off to sleep for a while now. "...hungry for your loving affection / somehow you are both the cure and infection..."

Currently inspiring Jeff outside the world of sound:

I spend a lot of time watching videos about homemade electronics on YouTube. It's a huge genre, and I've fallen in love with a particular pair of hoaxers who claim to have invented an electromagnetic weapon from a couple microwaves. The sheer amount of aluminum foil they wear should be evidence enough of the satire, but their honest personas, a deep knowledge of mainstream understandings of science, and a pretty high production value make this invention somehow believable.

Constellations says:

We're excited by the tactile nature of this project -imagining the recorders Jeff sent out waiting on 50 strangers' bedside tables, and their sleep-drunk fumbles with the record button.

As an ensemble, the dream tapes are a peek into an alternate subconscious reality. The speakers are recording as they cross the boundary between sleep and waking. Their words slip past the mind's sense censor and thus possess a kind of intimacy that is interesting beyond the psychedelic content of the dreams.