Dreaming Of Sleep is the latest album by Philadelphia based Synth pop cartoon animators Tulipomania, who hail from Philadelphia and for this comeback album are a duo of Cheryl Gelover and Tom Murray, the album was produced by Richard Hartline with Howard Thompson as executive producer. They have also made animated films for most of the songs.
The album opens with the glitchy synth pop of You Had To Be There a phrase that when used in this setting is more the start of some horrific tale than a humble brag of being at some uber cool event your mates missed out on.
And Then the synths engulfed you, the drum machine spat out a new pattern and you tried to figure out a way forwards, through the malaise of the 2020's, the drum machine goes quazi-military beats, just before the sirens start blaring, as everything's gone to hell once more.
Do You Remember When songs like this were considered Euro synth weirdness, somewhat familiar, like they have re-worked a song by Agatha Christie (The Band not the author), as they try to remember the times that were happier than now.
From DC To Daylight has a gauzy pre-dawn feel as the claustrophobia is closing in on them, while they still hope that DC can stop being engulfed in perpetual darkness, the doom-laden sounds suffused with the timbre of our times.
Fades Away is imbued with the sorrows of our times, dark dystopian synths looking around and realizing that everything is Fading Away.
Then And Only Then has glitchy sweeping synths washes playing on your mind as the confusion of all the trauma of recent times makes them question everything around them as they try to replace what's been lost, to find a way to move on.
Blank-Gone It's Gone is fraught sounding synths with opaque vocals interjections of sweeping strings and clanging bells mourning everything that's been lost in recent times as the voices start to whisper through the walls at you.
Shines On exudes a little bit of hope amongst the down hearted wash of synths, that somehow the good will rise and Shine On, overcoming all that's been dragging us down.
It's About Time for us to break free from the dark goth inspired synths, bringing about that revolution, to bring us out of the dark and into the light once more, allowing everyone to have enough money to live decent lives once again.
Time Will Tell if humanity has a future or not, Tulipomania are dreaming that we do still have a future, where dark hued synth songs are all the rage, aa everyone falls in love with the bands animations. As we all wake from our dream state with a start and a spring in our step.
The album closes with You Had To Be There (Martyn Ware, Charles Stooke Remix) that has more strings and is a bit more upbeat than the original mix, but still feels like he's survived some horror show event rather than been in the coolest club ever.
Find out more at https://tulipomania.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-of-sleep https://tulipomania.com/ https://www.facebook.com/TheTulipomania/
