Black Strobe Vinyl & CDs

Review: Since its inception, producer and composer Joe Acheson has carefully developed Hidden Orchestra from a simple initial project concept of 'an imagined orchestra' into something that has flourished into a widespan musical universe of its own, truly unlike anything else. While new album 'To Dream is to Forget' certainly maintains this mission statement, it also brings about a sea-change for the project on a few fronts. Released via Acheson's own newly formed Lone Figures imprint, the musical direction for the record involved a concerted effort to condense musical themes and ideas into more immediate arrangements, with less utilisation of field recordings than previously released material. Amounting to a slow-building sublimation for cathartic live-feel buildups and neoclassical slowdowns, the album sums up its title nicely, quoted from poet Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa - 'no one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake.'