Filtered through the same industrial haze that defines all of Abul Mogard's work, Above All Dreams wraps dense synthesizer drones in a warmth that feels almost bodily — close and pressurized, like heat radiating off concrete. The Italian musician Guido Zen, working as Abul Mogard, builds each piece from slowly evolving tonal masses that blur the boundary between melody and texture. Released on Ecstatic in 2018, the album carries a bruised tenderness unusual for music this physically heavy. The tenderness takes a while to emerge from those heavy drones; that's what makes the long pieces worth staying with.
appears in: essential ambient, study session