Chris Coco - Daydream Utopia (2024)

Daydream Utopia is an album of atmospheric downtempo electronica made to be played in two sessions on an old fashioned vinyl disc. As the title suggests it's a soundtrack for a day dream or maybe an inner or outer space exploration.
File under : electronica / beyond-balearic / downtempo / experimental / cosmic home listening

More notes on the album - messages from another point in spacetime and more questions than answers?

What is Daydream Utopia? I guess it’s a vague idea of a better way of being, a feeling, a fuzzy image of an alternate reality, that is hard to describe in words, which is why it has made itself into a collection of tracks on an album, contained in a sleeve that has images and clues but no concrete answers to the question.
But then, maybe there are only more questions that emerge from asking the question. The music has a warm, analogue sound that is at the same time futuristic and nostalgic. It’s made using old machines and new software; it’s mixed digitally to appear on an outdated music carrier - vinyl.
There’s a clarity and purpose the music that pushes forward as well as it appears to cover its tracks, like a double snow plough in a sand storm.
Is Synesthesia about the gift of seeing colours in music or a broadcast on FM radio from California in the 80s beamed back to earth from ComSat after forty years lost in orbit?
If For The People was a peace march would it be fleshy humans in the streets or an imaginary demo dreamed by artificial intelligence?
We do know that Tokyo Ame is a conversation between two lovers, one in Tokyo, one in the Light House studio in London where the track was made. It sounds like love can be about ordinary things like a simple conversation across time zones about rain in two cites in two different parts of the world. Is it saying love is familiarity and friendship, a connection, wherever the lovers happen to be, however disconnected they may feel in the moment?
We know there are more connections to Japan on Leap Year, a song made in collaboration with jazz musician Yoshiharu Takeda. We know there is a power in the vocal performance, but can anybody decipher the meaning?
Is the long, building Interstellar a journey out to the stars or a journey into your mind? Would one, with all its complexity and toil, ultimately be any different from the other?
And what exactly is the Serenity Test?