Rural Tapes - Oneiric (2025)

Oneiric, the fifth studio album by Norwegian electronic artist Rural Tapes (Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen), explores the theme of dreams and moments of fleeting lucidity. The twelve-track album utilizes analogue electronic equipment to conjure surreal yet familiar soundscapes, ranging from wistful meditations to tracks that transport the listener to realms beyond comprehension. The album's musical style traverses multiple genres, including kitschy space-age pop, ambient electronica, and trippy, jazz-inflected elements reminiscent of the works of Sven Wunder and Dungen. Despite being largely instrumental (with only two tracks featuring guest vocals from Alexis Taylor and Gary Olson), the project offers a playful and varied journey that generally succeeds in capturing the fascinating and unpredictable state of drifting in and out of consciousness, though some moments, such as the track ‘Hypermnesia’, may feel too thinly spread. The defining track is named ‘Fantasia’.

Tracklist:
1-1 Rural Tapes - NREM [1:11]
1-2 Rural Tapes - Flower Lab [6:37]
1-3 Rural Tapes - Retire the Fool [2:50]
1-4 Rural Tapes - Hypermnesia [4:51]
1-5 Rural Tapes - Eidetic Memory [1:29]
1-6 Rural Tapes - Bird’s-Eye View [3:46]
1-7 Rural Tapes - Woolgathering [0:38]
1-8 Rural Tapes - Fantasia [3:05]
1-9 Rural Tapes - Reverie [1:42]
1-10 Rural Tapes - Dream Within a Dream [0:23]
1-11 Rural Tapes;Gary Olson - Lingering Souls [3:45]
1-12 Rural Tapes - Lucid Dreaming [5:35]