El Cielo (album)
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El Cielo is Dredg's second album, released on October 8, 2002. It was recorded at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio, CA and at Longview Farm in N. Brookfield, MD. Producers included Ron St. Germain, Tim Palmer and Michael Rosen.
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About the album
Like Dredg's first album, Leitmotif, El Cielo is a concept album. The booklet with El Cielo contains letters written by sufferers of sleeping disorders. All of the songs on the album (except the instrumentals, obviously) contain snippets of the text in the booklet.
One of the main influences on the band for El Cielo was a painting by Salvador Dali entitled "Dream Caused By The Flight Of A Bee Around A Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening," which also happens to be what the acronym in "Brushstroke: dcbtfoabaaposba" stands for. The painting was unveiled in 1944 and contains references to many of the album's core themes and song titles, including a long-legged elephant ("An Elephant In The Delta Waves") with a Papal Insignia upon its back ("The Papal Insignia" was a song recorded for El Cielo but only saw release on an Industry Demo recorded in 2001 and didn't make it onto El Cielo). Also pictured is a woman laying in a canyon ("The Canyon Behind Her"). Band members have been quoted as saying that this Dali painting "is sleep paralysis," a literal representation of the condition from which Dali's wife actually suffered from.
This is further supported by the translation of the Japanese spoken word from the beginning of "The Canyon Behind Her" - "This album was inspired by a painting titled: "Dream Caused By The Flight Of A Bee Around A Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening". It is recommended that you view this painting as you listen to El Cielo. It is as if one stimulus awakens other senses. In other words, it's about 'drawing music.'"
Early pressings of El Cielo were in a cardbord fold-out CD holder with pictures of clouds bordered by runes. Later pressings of El Cielo are apparently in the generic plastic jewel case. The cover of the later versions are obviously the cover of the booklet, which is a sort of brown leathery texture with the band's name and the album name on it. The image provided on this page is the cover of the earlier, cardboard fold-out version. Both versions are otherwise identical and have the same booklet.
Track 12, "Of the Room", is a remastered version of one of Dredg's earlier demo songs (originally found on their 2001 Industry Demo, and later on the EP Extended Play For The Eastern Hemisphere, released in 2002). It is the only song on the album produced and engineered by Michael Rosen.
Track listing
- "Brushstroke: dcbtfoabaaposba"
- "Same Ol' Road"
- "Sanzen"
- "Brushstroke: New Heart Shadow"
- "△"
- "Sorry But It's Over"
- "Convalescent"
- "Brushstroke: A Walk In The Park"
- "Eighteen People Living In Harmony"
- "Scissor Lock"
- "Brushstroke: Reprise"
- "Of The Room"
- "Brushstroke: An Elephant In The Delta Waves"
- "It Only Took a Day"
- "Whoa Is Me"
- "The Canyon Behind Her"
Music videos
- "Same Ol' Road" directed by American McGee.
- "Of The Room" directed by Ben Rehki.
External links
- Album Analysis (http://www.defyperception.net/dredg/elcielo.htm)
- A good resource for Sleep Paralysis, one of the themes of the album (http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P.html)