It has been covered by Bruce Springsteen and Arcade Fire, and soundtracks American Honey and new Adam Curtis documentary HyperNormalisation - but is it a song of hope or despair?
About 100 minutes into Adam Curtis’s latest documentary, HyperNormalisation, there’s a montage of movie scenes in which skyscrapers are blown up by bad guys, crumbling into themselves as people leap from flaming top-storey windows. All of these films, Curtis tells us, were made before 9/11. As the strangely prophetic scenes keep coming, Suicide’s Dream Baby Dream drones in the background.
In the context of a film convinced that we have “retreated into a dream world that allows dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside”, Martin Rev and Alan Vega’s track seems to mock the state of blissful ignorance Curtis believes society has wrapped itself in. Dream Baby Dream is a song that hangs between hope and nihilism, and Curtis’ disaster reel embraces the latter.
Related: Suicide's Alan Vega: a punk pioneer who shoved the streets back in people's faces
Continue reading...by Alexandra Pollard via Electronic music | The Guardian
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