Released in 1993 Dreamfish was / is a collaboration between Pete Namlook and Mixmaster Morris. Both were big names in the world of ambient techno. Namlook was known, not least for his crazy work rate, with his label, Fax, issuing something new every week. Morris had been touring the globe non-stop, off the back of the success of his debut LP, Flying High.

Morris was booked to DJ at an event in Basel, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the discovery of LSD, and Caspar Pound, founder of London’s Rising High Records, suggested that he stop off at Namlook’s studio in Frankfurt on the way. There, Dreamfish was created in 2 days. One for recording. One for mixing. This was a reflection of Namlook’s “first take, best take” production line-like process, rather than Morris’ “play around for 24 hours before recording anything” approach. Despite their apparent differences in personality, the results of the session are proof that the pair hit it off.

The improvisations made full use of Namlook’s expensive, analogue equipment, especially his Oberheim 4-voice, which Morris calls, “The big white beast” and describes a looking like “white goods, something out of an industrial kitchen.” The melodies, in places, are sly references to Morris’ love of Bertolt Brecht. The opening, School Of Fish is over 18 minutes of frequencies spinning and spiralling like restless fractals, bouncing off one another in busy, but bucolic Brownian motion. The electronics exuding a kind of organic energy. Almost sentient, and further shaken by storms, surges of sound effects, somewhere between surf and thunder. Synths send out new age arcs and patterns of pretty, rapid ringing chimes. The latter dancing, darting, like light catching silvered scales. Raising Steve Reich-ian counterpoint and sorta recalling Tangerine Dream’s Love On A Real Train. This 2-man Music For 18 Musicians rising and falling in slow waves.

The project took its title from a hallucinogenic tropical fish, that Morris was turned on to by American biochemist, Alexander Shulgin, the man responsible for the rediscovery of MDMA. The voice of another famous psychedelic explorer, Terrence McKenna, the “Timothy Leary of the 1990s” can be heard on Hymn. Sampled from Morris’ personal tapes, the ethnobotanist and “heroic dose” advocate questions the male dominance of Western gods (how can “god” be a man when men can’t give birth?). His monologue no doubt provided fuel for some serious expanded mind conversations back in the day. Like a classic 80s Sci-Fi score sculpted from repeating cascades and LFO pulses, the track constructs a complex musical maze, a labyrinth, for those minds to get to lost in. 28 minutes long, descending deeper, getting darker as it goes.

Fishology’s distorting drones describe a sparse, vast kosmische void. A bottomless bass space inhabited by tiny fragments of treated robotic voices – Daleks scatting – arcade game bleeps and chirrups. Underwater is true ambient. An expanse of spectral echo, a spine-tingling stillness, full of far away whale song. As if listened to from safe inside a protective bubble. Fathoms down. These, though, zoom closer and closer, while becoming more alien. If this were a Tangerine Dream then it’d be Zeit. It’d make a smashing soundtrack for a salt water, sensory-deprived float. Scrubbing your senses momentarily clean and encouraging a higher, spic-er, span-er mental state. Affecting an emptiness enough to act as BGM. Bustling enough to give your imagination a gentle prod and poke. 

Dreamfish has been repressed to vinyl, with great enthusiasm and care, by Silent State Recordings.