During these soggy days of Brexit dampened spirits, worldwide floods and fires, we’ve never needed our dreams more. Now is the time to observe, retaliate and create. In this issue, we explore artists who find a new reality, through shifting the subconscious.

Emma Daman Thomas, lead singer of Welsh psychedelic electronic band Islet, talks about the lonely Welsh hills and sleeping children who help find their playful, probing and rocking out sounds. We talk to Li Yilei, the challenging debut artist who is releasing a new album, Unabled Form. They discuss how dream and reality can be the same, tunneling electronic compositions from their inflamed sensory disorder.

We examine the conflict between queer world-making and social-climbing in the artifice of Cecil Beaton, as a new exhibition comes to London. And Jonathan Apelbaum, from the Berlin collective Analog Dream, dreams of a submissive masculinity as a way of achieving quality. His vision of a feminine hegemony and individuals in bathrooms and private spaces undress and reassemble the genders and selves we present and hide on a daily basis.

This month’s DJ mix by Caoimhe Lavelle quickens our surreal pursuit of dreams and disruption with lyrics of dark power and fantasy from Roxy Music, Acid Arab and Suicide.

The harder things get, the more we must dare to imagine.

Love on ya,

Soma

Soma Ghosh

Editor

 

Photo by Analog Dream.

Follow Soma on Twitter @calcourtesan; Jonathan Apelbaum & Analogdream on Insta @j_apelbaum_analog_dream.