Bill Holt - Dreamies :: “Auralgraphic Entertainment”
Both reclusive and reverberated in the retro Renaissance of rhetoric rapture, Springfield, Delaware County (suburbs of Philadelphia) based musician and state employee Bill Holt is a completely unheard-of act and alchemical student in sonic structure and tonal texture in a pre-Eno world. Considered to be a closeted musician based on his distinctive decisions and desires to remain more behind the scenes of his projects and oscillating output instead of endless touring and constant saturation of one’s expedition to greatness, Holt began his musical journey in 1973 after purchasing an original Moog model Six synthesizer, an Ovation guitar for two hundred dollars, similar to the model sported by Glen Campbell, and a TEAC 4 track reel to reel to initiate a bloodthirsty ideology of what music could be like if only it was meticulously mastered and cosmically conquered through the elemental energies that came from the epic decade the musician occupied. Heavily influenced and moved by the iconic intensity of the 1960s, Holt was eagerly engaged in late president J.F.K.’s monumental movement in culture and politics while being fully aware of the previous years when the reign of the Nazis was strong and unfathomably in hate and visceral violence during the 1940s.
“Feeling free for the first time in my life, I sat down as a music composer, a would-be artist, and tried to express the haunting, distant dream that was rising up inside me.”
His deep community-based connection to the tumultuous times continued to unfold as the Vietnam War broke out, Holt’s responsibilities had already become apparent as his roles as a husband and father soon filled up most of his time and mind, which, in retrospect, may have spared him some of the more demonically dynamic details that continued to unravel as the decade fiercely pushed forward. Having led a straight job for most of his twenties, the now nearing thirty-year-old reared his head out the whispering windows and into the world, filled with more drugs, sex, and rock and roll now more than ever, Holt’s consciousness curiosity had only grown stronger as he wondered about his place in the world of music and electrifying expression. By early 1972, Holt had tuned in, turned on, and dropped out of the ravaging rat race and invested in the irresistible nature of creating music for the first time after experiencing The Beatles’ “Revolutionary #9”, a number that iconically inspired an entire generation outside of their already well-established epidemic in music and culture. It was officially on, and while occupying a new moniker, “Dreamies,” all he had to do was dangerously dive into the endless depths of blissed-out layers of sound collage, fundamental feedback, and the esoteric elements that would eventually make his 1973 masterpiece "Auralgraphic Entertainment,” a timeless, cult classic. Laying the album to tape in its extraterrestrial entirety, Holt cosmically conceived the album in his basement and, for the first time in his life, felt the feverish fundamentals of becoming a free man for the first time.
Issued on Stone Theatre Productions, the album’s radical nature imposes on the subconscious by intensely introducing elements of chaos, popular music/culture, sounds of war, and Holt’s newly established talents as a composer. "Auralgraphic Entertainment,” enlightens the essence of the late 1960s, while simultaneously introducing the more liberated listenability of electronic music in its early stages. Captured in two tracks that blissfully break up into this bewildering collection of possessed poetry and multi-layered dissonance, the galactical guts of Holt’s lone masterpiece eagerly echos into the sonic silence of space with spiritual snippets like “Sunday Morning Song (Daze Before The Future),” “Cathode Ray Crisis,” “Invitation To Dream (Chromatic Aberration),” and the album’s illustrious opener “Sunday Morning Song (High-Frequency Heros).” Holt’s interstellar imprint on music is short, shadowy, and practically nonexistent in the grand scheme of things, ultimately reflected in his determination and dedication to shedding the skin suit of “normalcy” to seek something more meaningful in a world filled with mundane dominance and spiritual crisis, to say the least, is nothing short of a melodic miracle. Some things are better discovered decades later once the universe provides a proper and appreciative audience to swim in its sonic seas.
