Daniel Lanois – Queen City Sounds and Art

The beginning of “Transcendental Medication” sounds like we’re peeking into the end of a movie with the final credits rolling. But it reprises with a sound almost like white noise but with a touch of melody that stretches into an infinite horizon, a sonic canvass upon which the drawn out pedal steel notes cast tones that enter that sonic stream in parallel. Like a previous track we reviewed for this site, “Lake of Dreams,” this song recalls Brian Eno’s “Deep Blue Day” from the 1983 album Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks for which Daniel Lanois contributed his own iconic lap steel work that unified a grounded Americana quality with cosmic ambient music to transport the mind to tranquil spaces free of the rat race of regular human life. The elegance and subtlety of the performance leaves no edges yet draws you in with a deep sense of peace with which you want to connect. Listen to “Transcendental Medication” on YouTube and connect with The Howard Hughes Suite at the links provided.

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“Lake of Dreams” proceeds in a recursive fashion a streaming atmospheric tonal line that expands with additional textures and parallel sounds suggesting circular movement, slow ripples. The title is thus apt as you’re drawn into the drones that put your mind from a tranquil everyday headspace into one traveling on the waves of a lake from a mystical dream where your spirit can be at rest and open to information and feelings one perhaps resisted previously. The unmistakable movement of sound through long delay and the reverse version thereof takes one out of any sort of standard time and beyond even compound time to a sound that intentionally or not takes the listener outside of such limitations into a pure and intuitive experience. Could be synths, could be other electronics, could be processed pedal steel by which The Howard Hughes Suite made a name for himself in local and international music circles but the soundscaping is both organic and ethereal and reminiscent of the cosmic ambient of Popol Vuh, the mystical Americana of Daniel Lanois, the space new age of Apollo-period Brian Eno and the otherworldly emotional eloquence of Robin Guthrie’s solo work. Listen to “Lake of Dreams” on Spotify, be on the lookout for the album High & Lonesome album out February 18, 2022 and connect with The Howard Hughes Suite at the links provided.