Big, aching sound. Wisconsin’s Technicolor Teeth dropped this pearl of a 7″ (“Blood Pool” b/w “Drips”) back at the end of July on Accidental Guest Recordings, and somehow I completely glossed over it. But I’m kind of glad I missed it at first, because this record is absolutely perfect for a raw September morning: this thing is a doleful dreamy Leviathan, from the very first strum. Interesting, too, because this kind of weighty, contemplatively down-tempo music doesn’t exactly dominate the band’s 2012 Teenage Pagans – maybe four of the twelve songs resemble these tracks – and yet, I’m head over heels. The opening guitar seems to spin slowly, beginning the journey into a droning soundscape, while those peels of fuzzed-out rotary guitar echo like thunder. The track takes its time, avoiding a traditional circular structure in favor of something more linear, more natural, and this really creates the mysterious, revelatory impression that makes this track so affecting. The cymbal swell ushers in a three-minute-long set of fading musical circles, which hits you like some ancient ritualistic chant or the feeling you have after waking up from a dream that was neither nightmare nor blissful, or, somehow, was both.

I really hope that Technicolor Teeth is aiming to make more tracks like these, because the dreampop-escapade, though definitely in vogue, is seldom executed with the same precision or obsessive attention to detail that makes this release so fantastic – that is, like a fantasy. Surf on over to Accidental Guest and pick up a copy so you can sink yourself in this dark masterpiece.