Released today Friday October 17th via Clay Pipe Music, Oneiric is a one of a kind album that feels like drifting through a lucid dream you don’t quite want to wake up from.
Norwegian producer and multi-instrumentalist Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen (aka Rural Tapes) builds this world from the ground up, layering vintage synths, field recordings, and brass into a cosmic patchwork that’s both hypnotic and deeply human. It’s an album that doesn’t shout for attention but definitely gets it.
The record’s title fits perfectly, “oneiric” meaning dreamlike, because that’s exactly what this is. Across twelve tracks, Mathisen explores the strange, surreal, and oddly comforting corners of the subconscious. There’s a beautiful unpredictability in how each piece flows into the next, with sounds inspired by French dream pop, ambient jazz, and psychedelic soundscapes. The opening moments on NREM and Flower Lab feel like floating in some forgotten dream. NREM especially is like arriving in a beautiful perfect land, with subtle bird chips that so brilliantly transform into a million sounds on Flower Lab. It’s easy to get lost here, and that’s the point.
Guest collaborations add welcome bursts of colour. Retire The Fool, featuring Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, glides through minimalist electronics with an almost eerie calm, while Lingering Souls, sung by Gary Olson of The Ladybug Transistor, shines as the album’s pop centrepiece, its glow and brass arrangements giving a rare moment of clarity amid the haze. Even when Mathisen wanders furthest into abstraction midway through the piece with tracks like Fantasia and Reverie, there’s a precision to it. There’s an understanding of how to make even the most experimental passages feel purposeful.
Recorded at his rural Nygrenda Vev & Dur studio in Norway, the album feels rooted in isolation at times but never loneliness. There’s a warmth here, a handcrafted analogue feel that makes even the most cosmic tracks feel grounded. By the time Lucid Dreaming closes the album it feels like an awakening, not just from sleep, but from the strange and beautiful world Mathisen’s built.
Oneiric isn’t an easy record. It’s far from it. It’s sprawling, patient, and sometimes demands more attention than you’re ready to give. But if you let it take you, it rewards you in spades. It’s the sound of an artist fully in control of his own sonic language, and even when it drifts into the abstract, there’s always a thread of emotion pulling it back.
Dreamlike, detailed, and distinct, Oneiric is another step forward for Rural Tapes. 7 out of 10
ONEIRIC TRACK LISTING
A1 – NREM
A2 – Flower Lab
A3 – Retire The Fool
A4 – Hypermnesia
A5 – Eidetic Memory
B1 – Bird’s-Eye View
B2 – Woolgathering
B3 – Fantasia
B4 – Reverie
B5 – Dream Within A Dream
B6 – Lingering Souls
B7 – Lucid Dreaming
ORDER HERE
Reviewer – Alan Robinson @alan_robinson_photography