Review of Fragments of the Dream Machine from Sound Projector:

New release, Fragments of the Dream Machine is out now on 28 Angles.

Nice review by Chris Downton in Cyclic Defrost (www.cyclicdefrost.com)

Austin, Texas-based experimental composer / producer Greg Headley first emerged onto LA's indie-rock scene in the mid nineties as a member of Tintamarre, but since 1996 he's released no less than eight albums of solo compositions under his own name, with six of them being released on his own 28 Angles label. His ninth full-length release in total and the follow-up to last year's 'There Comes A Violent Love / Pulse', '24 Carat Abnormalities' is apparently influenced primarily by Headley's Eastern European travels during summer 2007, and sees him constructing all sounds and melodic motifs with a combination of guitar and software instruments. In some senses the nine minute long 'January 77' represents something of a forbidding opening track here, as it emerges from the tentative swirl of what sounds like a treated cello being bowed, the mournful minor keys motif being repeated over and over to the point where it verges of becoming monotonous, only for a sudden shearing wall of distorted power-noise electronics to completely fill every inch of the frequency spectrum with what resembles an acidic cloud of pressurised gas. From there, the punishing noise gradually begins to resolve itself into a cascading flow of almost liquid digital noise, as the entire bottom drops out unexpectedly, leaving proceedings floating in blissfully ambient space, as life-support machine-esque beeps slowly tick by.
After a wash of digitally edited shortwave radio noise, 'The Sun Blind' casts things in a far more fragile yet still markedly sombre setting, as stark, howling treated guitar chords arc off a frigid-sounding backdrop of pulsing electronic ambience, before 'Days Of My Bolshevik Youth' sees Headley crafting vast, orchestral atmosphere reminiscent of a film score as majestic synthetic strings float out beneath the tentative wander of buzzing guitar chords, resulting in a moment that certainly highlights the comparisons that have previously been made between Headley's work and 'Before And After Science'-era Eno. While the predominant aesthetic explored here is for the most part and brooding, melancholic one, 'Folk Tone' offers a brief glimpse of sunlight, as delicate jazz-soul keys drift like raindrops through a trail of idyllic ambience. Well worth investigating – there's also a free companion track composed completely of shortwave radio recordings made in Prague titled 'Tower Z Now Transmitting' available to download at www.28angles.com.

Review of 24-carat abnormalities from Vital Weekly.

As before Headley plays guitar and software instruments to transform the sounds made on the six strings. It's however not easy to recognize the guitar all the time. Sometimes it's pretty obvious, but sometimes Headley manages to make it sound like the crackle of short/long wave or thunderous like a hurricane or airplane flying over. Dynamics play an important role in the six pieces on this release. Sometimes deceivingly sweet and mellow, but it's the silence before the thunder breaks out. It's move from much of his previous work which stayed more on one volume level and was throughout more ambient. In some ways the previous release 'There Comes A Violent Love/Pulse' still remains an anomaly in his work - with his modern classical approach - and '24-carat Abnormalities' sees him returning to his guitar phase, but with the addition of dynamics as a new strong point. That previous one was a highlight in his career, perhaps mainly for being so different than the others, but this new one, while moving outside his tradition again and remaining a similar approach to musical equipment, is also a standout work. Quite a mature and carefully planned work!

I have a new release out called 24-carat abnormalities. Info and an mp3 not on the release at 28 Angles.

I made some short videos that include excerpts of music from the release. The videos can be seen on YouTube or on MySpace videos.

http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/reviews/Rev%20headly4.htm

Greg Headley has landed the enormous leap from intricate electronic musician to modern composer now. After his eloquent and fascinating re-work of Gustav Holst's "the operation of the heavens" and studies into the core of sounds (academic or not, who cares either way?) he now presents two pieces of modern composition that prove he has found a new language to work with. A way more complex and mysterious language, not as easy to decipher than before, but a mesmerizing and intensely fascinating language as well.

"There comes a violent love" is almost like a modern chamber orchestra piece, with four parts in various modes of tranquility and complexity. Modes of sounds, denominated by various instruments, appear as from nowhere and then recede back into the darkness. Most inspiring are the leaking piano drops of "blessed darkness" but also the softly droning spheres with flutes (played by Yvette Caldwell. layered on top of "let me still be touched by grace" are soothing and reconciling. For all of them it is true to say that the holes between the notes, the free space of sounds slowly fading out or sending their subconscious echo beforehand, are as important as the notes played. At times field recordings of the ocean underline phrases and movements. "There comes..." is an intriguing, fascinating piece of music that perfectly predicts the feeling of calm before the storm breaks loose. As people tell me, there is always a certain time of calm before a reckless, intense love affair breaks loose as well. Without wanting to touch the personal life of Headley, this idea nevertheless starts a lot of pictures and stories inside the listeners head.

The second piece, "Pulse" is a much more straightforward strategic idea, but nevertheless just as fascinating. Keyboards abound (played or worked out together with Toshi Osawa) in a slow but slowly rising dynamic. It would be easy to root this piece back to the array of legendary minimal composers with synthesizers and then try to judge it for what it's worth in comparison. But that is not my way of perceiving music. I am more interested in effect, and "Pulse" is serious and meditative at the same time. The pulse is not available on the surface but has to be felt by the listener. Like the long time meditations of zen masters, who reduce their breathing to almost nil, the pulse inside these soft layers of keyboards is also reduced to almost inaudibility. But it is there and it needs close listening and the will to be captured by it. A letting lose sort of mindset is necessary, and patience.

Headly has taken a long route to come to the musical point where he is now, from free improvisation on all kinds of guitars to manipulating these sounds with the computer, slowly leaving the guitar out and turning towards composition, finding an interest in compositional theory and rubbing shoulders with classical composition to the suites presented on his latest CD. It is an easy guess to say, that it won't stop there, but what is more important, is to see how his approach and vision becomes more and more skillfull, unique and fascinating. Sound is like an organism and has its own live, that can include times of restless chaos as well as laidback resting and contemplating. The secluded live of a thinker, whose main adventures happen inside his mind, is not at all the worst kind of live there is. For sounds and for humans.

From Foxy Digitalis
www.digitalisindustries.com/foxyd/reviews.php?which=2487
www.28angles.com

For fans of galaxy travel on the crest of giant tonal waves, glittering with granule-sized detail, this CDR release is a delicious discovery. Taking "The Planets Suite" by Gustav Holst as his inspiration, Greg Headley from Austin, Texas, has found himself a sonic corner somewhere between Keith Fullerton Whitman's "Playthroughs" and Eluvium's "Lambent Material".

Rather than just sampling a prior recording of Holst, "The Operation of the Heavens" is a performance of the Suite's base elements reconfigured by guitar and laptop. Headley's original style delivers on both a theoretical and entertainment level. Besides cheeky subliminal echoes of the original Suite, the only remaining element of classical music to be found is the idea of orchestral movement. Otherwise it's all wide-spectrum noise, and self-generating movement. Much like images from the Hubble telescope, these beautiful stretches of sound deliver remarkable visions of cosmological colour and approximations of celestial bodies, but never surrender steadfast conclusions or pinpoint details.

The lack of information to be found about Headley makes it easier to believe that these seven drones were dropped out of the sky by a kind extraterrestrial. Each song is named after the planets of our solar system, and assigned a character based on somewhat predictable conclusions about their nature, eg. fury for Mars, movement for Mercury, and wisdom for Jupiter. This slight descriptive creative laziness is thankfully nowhere evident in the music. Uranus (a gas giant smaller than Saturn and Jupiter) is the largest and possibly the most impressive track, while Mars is far from the fiercest song.

Though faster and not as dense as Stars of the Lid, there is an equivalent ability here to build internal complexity within external lethargy, and to stay in the foreground despite the music's ambient nature.

A lavish 16-page book accompanies the release. I haven't seen it, but according to Headley's website it's an integral part of the whole listening experience. Even without it I thought this music fantastic, and deserving of a much wider audience. 8/10

www.vitalweekly.net/565.html
www.28angles.com

Unfortunately and regrettably Greg Headley is not a common name, even when he has released a couple of things in the last few years. For his new release he moves away from his guitar and treatments and composes his pieces. He found the structure for his pieces in the ancient playwright Aeschylus and Pauline Reage's 'Story Of O'. 'There Comes A Violent Love' has four parts. They consist of piano, organ and flute sounds and are meditative in approach. Headley plays some nice tunes, and is in no way similar to his previous release. This radical break with his previous work, which was good, but this is even better. Serious music by a serious guy.
The fifth piece on this release is 'Pulse', dedicated to the performance artist of many extreme things Marina Abramovic and is a duet for two synthesizers, based, just as much of Abramovic's work on repetition and duration. Long sustaining sounds with a highly ambient character, this is not extreme music, but one that requires nothing else than patience to let it capture you. I think it's a truly beautiful piece, slowly evolving, slowly changing. Very nice. His best release so far.