Keaper - Waking Dream a Review
There’s a moment early in Narm based band Keaper’s stunning debut album ‘Waking Dream’ where vocalist and guitarist Ameya sings, “I’m trying to go somewhere, could I ever go somewhere I’ve never been?”. This sums up to me the invite of this ambitious project, Keaper are welcoming you into a dense and layered world, one that rewards a listener’s abandon.
‘Waking Dream’ is an audio visual concept album. It has a tie in book, gorgeous video clips – all supporting Keaper’s musical world-building. A night of dreaming has been captured and magnified with angelic vocals, dynamic drumming and guitar forward song-writing.
Ameya’s vocals are a clear highlight on this LP, so evocative with their whisper in your ear style presence, gently double and triple tracked and spread throughout the stereo field. They feel omnipresent, guiding you through the album with a tone and feel that is reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins siren Elizabeth Fraser, or for local context, rising Australian pop-act Aleksiah.
Cocteau Twins and their dreampop and shoegaze contemporaries Slowdive, Ride and The Smashing Pumpkins feel like touchstones throughout ‘Waking Dream’. As a giant Pumpkins fan I hear a lot of different parts of their career on here, Melon Collie in the scope of the project, Ava Adore in the quieter moments like ‘Weightless” and Siamese Dream in some of the more aggressive guitar driven tracks like ‘Alone’ and ‘Shadow’.
In a world dominated often by disparate single releases, and acts that release music that doesn’t always feel like it’s connected, the audacity of Keaper releasing a multi-tiered concept album is one that is as gutsy as it is rewarding. There’s a focus and immersion that flows throughout the record. It transports you somewhere you’ve never been, while being comforting and familiar. It’s a very pleasant dream.
