“I like to think of this record as pop music, but more of something like hectic pop music.” – Tim Koh
In Your Dreams is Tim’s most straightforward and accessible release to date, and an exciting addition to his body of solo work, which hitherto can broadly be described as experimental noise. The poignant song collection tackles core themes of life’s calamities, broken love, and transitory relationships, yet counterbalances its essential melancholy with a whimsical, upbeat, and playful spirit throughout.
While not strictly autobiographical, the songs draw from Tim’s recent personal experiences during his two-year isolation from friends and family, and create a compelling narrative of alienation, loss, and love. Tim wrote In Your Dreams in Amsterdam, L.A., and London in-between his time touring with Ariel Pink, and subsequently recorded the songs at home in Amsterdam while recovering from a near-fatal 2018 accident. The recurring hospitalizations that Tim has endured in recent years subtly find their way into the album through phone recordings from Tim’s actual hospital stints, underscoring the album’s themes on this highly personal work.
In Your Dreams deftly juxtaposes lush, densely layered sounds with stark simplicity through a series of quick turnarounds, creating the captivating feeling of tension and release that characterizes this remarkable song collection. Guest musicians on In Your Dreams include Chris Cohen on guitar, and drum help from Jay Watson (Tame Impala, Gum) and Josh da Costa (CMON).
Adding to the family feel of the album, longtime Ariel Pink and Tim Koh collaborator Jorge Elbrecht performed mixing duties along with mastering by Heba Kadry.
“One single from the album, ‘Rational Anthem’, is an experimental, psych-pop dream. Its off-kilter guitar progression reminds me of alt-pop kings The Flaming Lips. It has the sound of an upbeat indie rock track, but with an experimental edge that makes it far more interesting than that. It changes the sound in an instant, shifting from fast, choppy, distorted guitar riffs, to quiet, mellow sections that feel like a completely different song. In any other context, I don’t think that would work, but Tim managed to take these different sections and meld them together in a way that really works. The instrumentals are very interesting, they feel disjointed and chaotic, with lots of different things all going on at the same time, completely at odds with the relatively simple vocal line going over the top of it. I love the juxtaposition.” -Happy People Music
