by David Wilikofsky
The Korean term 개꿈, literally translated, means “dog dreams”. It’s used to frame dreams as nonsensical, figments of our imagination that have no bearing on reality. It’s also the inspiration for the latest album from experimental artist Lucy Liyou. Liyou is best known for their work with text to speech software, but their latest album largely forgoes that signature. It attempts to flip the idea of dog dreams on its head, seriously interrogating the meaning of their own recurrent dreams. The end result is their most fluid and dynamic work to date, one that truly feels like an exploration of the subconscious world.
On first listen, the most striking thing about Dog Dreams (개꿈) is its fluidity. Glistening passages of ambience give way to spoken monologues; fragments of pop songs mix with found sound and ASMR textures. Sometimes these sounds combine to tell stories of trauma (as in “April in Paris (봄)”, which interpolates an old jazz standard into a story of a sexual assault), at others they create narratives of love and longing; everything seems to flow freely, a jumble of thoughts, memories and feelings. This isn’t a coincidence; working closely with coproducer Nick Zanca, the duo used Liyou’s own dreams as a starting point for the improvisations that form the album. Their flights of fancy plumb their collective subconscious, the two pushing each other to probe the recesses of these psychic realms.
There’s plenty of contemporary music that treads similar territory, from the ambient-adjacent sound palette to the interest in conjuring up dream worlds. Yet Dog Dreams (개꿈) feels utterly distinct. More than any album I’ve heard in recent memory, Liyou’s music captures the machinations of the subconscious mind. It’s an extraordinary piece of music, one that gives voice to the thoughts rattling around in your head.