Bleep

It’s safe to say that Nathan Micay’s last full length caused something of a stir in the dance world. Almost entirely abandoning the trance-inspired technicolour dancefloor filler approach of his prior work under both Bwana and his birth name, 2020’s The World I’m Going To Hell For plotted a new course for the Copenhagen-based Canadian. Far more introspective in nature and indebted to ambient and jagged-edge braindance, the LP was reportedly built up from merely a few string instruments and a distortion pedal, offering him a new path forward. Micay has certainly kept busy in the time since, though he has drifted even further from the proverbial club, offering three consecutive acclaimed soundtracks for television and film. Suddenly an in-demand scorer, his time spent in Canadian youth orchestras has clearly come to pass. However, it turns out Micay has been cooking up a return in secret this whole time. Small tastes have been offered (WIPs have turned up here and there in the DJ sets of fellow travellers like Peach and Avalon Emerson), but To The God Named Dream, Micay’s latest full length for LUCKYME® is unlike anything else in his oeuvre thus far.

Thrillingly perched somewhere between the experimental classicism of his latest work and the feel good dance music on which he built his name, To The God Named Dream is something like a masterwork. Inspired by classic RPGs, Micay pulls sound design cues from horror movies and thrillers throughout God Named Dream and applies them alongside trusty 808 blasts and raved up synths to approximate “haunted library” music. Micay and LUCKYME® even designed their own multiplayer board game that’s packaged along with the vinyl to show their full commitment to the theme. Distilling the essences of his club work and his scoring, tracks like the early single ‘Fangs’ and ‘It’s Recess Everywhere’ certainly use breaks and other signifiers to emphasis their functionality as dance music, but the sheer (some might say, cinematic) scope of sounds and movement behind those time-honoured moves betray a producer forging his own path.