MERCURY REV - ALL IS DREAM - RARE ORIG 1ST PRESS LP

£ 25

$ 33

£ 25 Sold For

Jan 24, 2010 Sold Date

Jan 17, 2010 Start Date

1 Number Of Bids

Great Britain Country Of Seller

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Description

talb2 Store

As a lover and collector of vinyl for over 25 years, I appreciate the needs of the collector and what you require as a buyer. Therefore I provide Good honest accurate descriptions and gradings, and a fast and reliable delivery service. I use Rare record collector Grading system to grade the vinyl, cover and any extras which may come with the LP. All of my records are play tested from start to finish and any defects are listed if any, however I try to only sell vinyl in at least EX Condition, unless the rarity of the LP demands it to be listed.

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Mercury Rev - All is dream

Rare Original 1st Press UK Vinyl LP

2001 V2 Records.

Heavyweight vinyl

Tracks

The Dark is rising / Tides of the moon / Chains / Lincolns eyes / Nite & Fog / Little Rhymes / A drop in time / You're me queen / Spiders and flies / Hercules

Condition

Vinyl is in Excellent condition, labels are nice and clean. Cover is in Very good condition + just light wear around the edges

UK P+P Free

Europe £2.00

USA / Rest of the world £3.00

The long-awaited follow-up to the almost universally admired Deserter's Songs, All Is Dream extends further that album's blend of strings and wonderment, to a pitch of High Romanticism rarely attempted these days in any branch of the arts. It's the most orderly, focused recording they've made, and the one least stained by irony or cynicism (not that they were ever significant characteristics in the Mercury Rev design, their postmodernism being restricted purely to musical eclecticism), offering instead a world view based on a kind of benevolent occultism alchemised from myth and legend, dream and dread, astrology and psychology.

The opening track, "The Dark is Rising", sets the scene perfectly, its wide-screen orchestral intro leading into a song of balanced dualities, in which the interior life of dreams faces the painful realities of life, concealment entails revelation, and the vulnerability of Jonathan Donahue's plaintive vocal sits in odd equilibrium with the sweeping confidence of the strings. "I never dreamed I'd hurt you/ I never dreamed I'd lose you/ In my dreams I'm always strong," he confesses, introducing the theme of active participation in the unconscious that extends through to the final track, "Hercules", which welcomes the shared images and archetypes that loom in dreamtime.

Along the way, there are meditations on the relativity of time ("Spiders and Flies", "A Drop in Time"), predestination ("Tides of the Moon"), spiritual incompatibility ("Nite and Fog"), and fear both in and of the imagination ("Lincoln's Eyes"), studded with startling, evocative images – "Fangs long as neckties"; "Fragile as a sea horse"; "Words climb your tongue like a ladder to speak" – and swathed in dark, dizzying arrangements, a couple contributed by the former Bowie- producer Tony Visconti.

Like Deserter's Songs, All Is Dream is an album of uncommon musical ambition, Dave Fridmann's sublime production expertly balancing the vastness of the strings and background atmospheres with the intimacy of glockenspiel, pedal steel and bowed-saw detailing – the latter particularly effective in lending a spooky, fairytale wonder to "Tides of the Moon". With guitarist Grasshopper climaxing several tracks with glorious, unabashedly psychedelic solos, the overall mood is akin to Forever Changes in its blend of mystery, melody and dread, and almost as impressive. Not so much life-affirming as mind-affirming, Mercury Rev's All Is Dream stands alone, a spiritual beacon in a somatic culture.