A stellar radio source! 

Imagine a pillow. Picture it. Simple enough. Now, count the threads on its case. Describe its relative width and length. Read the washing instructions on the tag and note the brand name. Certainly, these finer details were not initially there; only the blurriest, most essential simulacrum. A half-rendered picture through half-lidded eyes, as in imagination or dreams or the echoes of memory. 

Experimental auteur Dylan Henner’s Star Dream FM is an album insofar as it is a film, a novel, a radio play, a musical. It is not so much a compilation of individual songs as it is a single, unified 41-minute picture. Consequently, a track-by-track breakdown feels inappropriate. Like a dream or a dozy night drive set to FM radio, separate events seem to blur and the fine bits seem to accumulate into one otherworldly haze. 

Star Dream FM tracks a bleary elliptical around the theme of nostalgia. Nostalgia for things that, to the listener, never were. The record’s premise is partly fiction, a supernatural radio memorial to Henner’s most formative moments. Yet, as one sinks into Star Dream FM, these faraway ghosts of another’s past life begin to feel undoubtedly real. 

A synthetic choir, static and rain, a buoyant marimba, unintelligible, choppy, distant voices; curious superimpositions, electronics that range from photospheric softness to oceanic depth. The individual textures at play are often pure and unburdened by convolution, much like that imaginary pillow. Others are thin, broken fractals whose mother pattern can never be known – where did the pillow exist before creativity summoned it? When these reminiscent enigmas begin to stack atop and dance with one another, they form something that enshrouds the creative mind in a comfortable, slumbering warmth: dreamstate. The progressions within these songs are not showy. They flow with a contemplative leisure, a slow pace that makes one feel suspended and adrift in Henner’s musical cosmos of memories. Henner has selected his sonic pieces carefully and assembled them seamlessly. 

Ironically, in spite of the mystery surrounding its creator, Star Dream FM has quite the identity. It is so very personal and vulnerable, a guided tour of an artist’s adolescence. Henner makes wonderful use of the ambient genre and the album format to tell a story that only he can. In an era that has seen the long-player obsolesce in favor of short-form content, every fully realized record like Star Dream is rejuvenating. 

Dim the lights, rest atop a pillow – a real one, hopefully – and tune in to Star Dream FM. You may soon find yourself wondering if the transmissions you hear are coming from a radio mast or a neutron star, if the things you recall are yours or someone else’s. Do enjoy this transcendent thing called art; much like our experiences and emotions, it is, in its own way, all we truly have.