Labeling Conversations as “dream pop” would be to do it a disservice. This isn’t some formulaic collection of by-the-numbers, post-chillwave, bedroom recorded, melancholic pop music, but rather an assortment of influences and ideas, a willingness to experiment with sounds and structure. For example, the album’s shortest song (excluding a forty second instrumental piece), ‘All In The Name Of Good Dancing’, clocks in at under two minutes, whereas ‘Dream Talk’, the album’s sprawling midsection, breaks the ten minute barrier.

The album opens with ‘Drift Down’, which you can see in video form below. The song is perfectly titled, feeling like the soundtrack to a slow and gentle descent. Next up is ‘Familiar Ground’ which starts slow and considered and builds into a climax that shimmers and swirls like something by Beach House.

‘The Bear’ is a Gothic folk fairytale, reserved and slightly creepy, like Timber Timbre whispering as they fall asleep. It tells the tale of a journey into the woods and an encounter with a grizzly bear.

“Trapped we are inside this place, 
trapped we will dig our own graves

But the bear will keep us safe,
if we only do one thing for him.”

Perhaps one for your alternative Halloween mixtape?

The aforementioned ‘Dream Talk’ descends into a lovely throbbing murmur, with barely audible vocals that echo and fade, not entirely unlike Julianna Barwick. ‘Ill’ is devastatingly sad and pretty, opening with the line, “try to pretend you’re not dying”, it captures the same mournful air of The Antlers’ brilliant album, Hospice. Next, ‘All In The Name of Dancing’ changes the tone, a Memoryhouse style pop song. The album closer (this time excluding an instrumental/ambient bonus track) ‘Chairs’ is all dreamy and pretty for a while and then begins a slightly surreal acceleration and ends in some kind of muted frenzy.

Check out the video for ‘Drift Down’ below:

You can get Conversations on a pay-what-you-want basis via the band’s Bandcamp page. It’s not often you find ‘free’ music with as much heart and attention to detail as this, so please dig deep and give the band a little something, they deserve it.

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He has 3 albums to date: Baby Prayers, Stoned Alone and the new release, Blue Suicide. All of his albums can be downloaded from his website for free, which I can’t recommend highly enough.

The issue of releasing his work for free is an important one for Mat. Or maybe it’s so unimportant, so obvious and natural, that it doesn’t need mentioning? He has said that real art should be selfless and therefore charging for digital releases removes what makes it art in the first place. In his words, people who charge for MP3s are “fucking delusional”.

If you can afford it his new album will be released on cassette very soon on Wonder Beard Tapes. If you lack the funds (or a cassette player) then share his music. As stated on Coma Cinema’s website: “If you feel the need to compensate us, we only ask that you share the music with others.“

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