15 Songs That Make You Feel Like You're Dreaming

By Joe Price & Constant Gardner

Some music is good for falling asleep to, and some makes you feel like you're already out. If you're in the right state of mind, these are the kinds of songs that take you on an out-of-body journey and make you feel like you're dreaming. It's an entrancing experience, unless you're constantly dreaming about being chased or your teeth falling out. If that's the case, these songs are probably more fitting.

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2. James Blake - "I Only Know (What I Know Now)"

James Blake's music has always had a dreamy quality to it, but his earlier output placed more of an emphasis on the experimental elements. "I Only Know (What I Know Now)" still stands as one of his most impressive examples of production, with its tactile buzzing and swirling bass contorting into a minimal brand of beauty that's easy to appreciate. It's not as instantly pretty as his later output is, but it lingers in the mind just like a surreal dream does the morning after.

3. Burial - "Distant Lights"

That "Burial sound" is still something that can't be replicated, with almost nothing having the power to evoke the same forlorn feeling Burial can. His music sounds up-close and personal, yet removed and distant. There's something intensely interesting to focus on in both the foreground and the background, and nowhere is this better realized than on "Distant Lights." The world's introduction to the "Burial sound" is a ghost of a dream, haunting and inspiring awe in equal measure. It sounds alive, unpredictable, as if it's a spectre strolling through the backstreets in heavy downpour.

4. Groove Armada - "At The River"

5. Aphex Twin - "Avril 14th"

Aphex Twin isn't exactly known for making music you can call "delicate," but that's the exact word that "Avril 14th" brings to mind. Nestled between absolutely bonkers breakbeats and distortion, the sparse piano track is one of his best. It doesn't come close to encapsulating his sound in the slightest, but it's compositionally perfect. It's able to evoke the kind of dreamlike nostalgia that very few artists are capable of.

6. William Basinki - "d|p 1.1"

It's hard to describe the sound of "d|p 1.1," but there really isn't anything like it. The way the loop slowly disintegrates, how you expect it to change and yet it only does so gradually; it's like drifting into a sleep you might not wake up from. It becomes a living, breathing thing as it gasps for air near the end of its hour-plus running time. Not every dream ends happy or with hope, but they all end. "d|p 1.1" is the dream that refuses to end, holding on for dear life as it slowly exits your mind.

7. Black Moth Super Rainbow - "Twin of Myself"

Both of Tom Fec's main projects are psychedelic and surreal, but they represent two different ends of the same spectrum. Tobacco's music is hellish, gruff, and beat-centric, whilst Black Moth Super Rainbow's music is celestial, pretty, and occasionally adorable. The floaty "Twin of Myself" represents Black Moth's prettiest elements vividly, fueling the type of rainbow and sugar-charged dreams our younger selves experienced.

8. Sisyphus - "Take Me"

Sisyphus' debut album had a lot of strong moments on it, but "Take Me" was perhaps the most surreal. The lengthy Sufjan solo track circles back in itself, repeating the lyrics over and over, occasionally drifting into darker territory. It's delightfully tender, romantic one second and far too personal the next. It's realistic yet strange, in the way those dreams we're too ashamed to speak of often are.

9. Bruised Skies - "Ursa"

We got to know British producer Bruised Skies through the atmospheric, sweeping, seven minute beauty "Make Me Feel," and he proves it was no one-off with his latest track "Ursa." The bass rumbles throughout while the percussion clanks forward and the vocal loops eerily, seemingly building to something, but never actually reaching whatever goal or prize is just around the corner or just through the fog. You keep reaching for it, you keep thinking you're about to reach it but you never do. Because you're dreaming.

10. Oneohtrix Point Never - "Chrome Country"

Everything about Daniel Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never album R Plus Seven is dreamlike. From the aesthetics accompanying the release and the peculiar videos to the uncanny valley instrumentation; it's just a wildly inventive record that inspires imagery equally as vivid. R Plus Seven's closing track, "Chrome Country," is the closest the album gets to reaching a traditional songlike structure, but even then Lopatin inverts things.

It begins simple enough, with a soft synth pad washing in and out, but it all builds towards one of the most outwardly pretty moments in all of Lopatin's discography. The micro-moments of beauty appearing and then quickly vanishing are only part of what makes "Chrome Country" so otherworldly. All of its details aren't quite realized as you'd expect, making it something like the most beautiful dream you've never had.

11. Dark0 - "Sweet Boy Pose (Mr. Mitch Peace Edit)"

British producer Mr. Mitch has an ongoing series of remixes which he calls "peace edits." The name is a play on the tradition of war dubs, where MCs and more recently producers would make tracks "sending for" (dissing or calling out) an opponent, and the edits Mr. Mitch makes are the polar opposite of an aggressive war dub. They're weightless, emotion-filled tracks, and even "Sweet Boy Pose" by Dark0 (get to know him here) is turned from an anthemic banger into a trippy dream where you're floating high above everything, moving in slow motion.

12. Lucki Eck$ - "Xan Cage"

Where a lot of rap music is based around the drums, Lucki Eck$ focuses heavily on the melody (in fact, he told us he writes to the melody instead of the main rhythm), which gives his songs a looseness and lightness that so much other hip-hop lacks. Listening to Lucki's new tape, BODY HIGH (download here), is like losing yourself in a drugged-out haze, or being trapped in a dark fever dream where someone's out to get you, but you don't know who. You want to wake up, but you can't—you're trapped just like Lucki in his Xan cage.

13. Spirit Agent - "Discovery of Sole"

There isn't much information surrounding Miami-based duo Spirit Agent. They had one studio album and a short EP, leaving but a long lost relic of hip-hop few have had the pleasure of experiencing. Its timeless sound, with the confounding lyrics and mystical atmosphere making it fiercely original. It flows like a surreal film, and the lyricism is just as mystifying as that dream you had last week that you swear means something, even if you can't quite put your finger on it.

deep incompleteness befalls before the fore / the soul has yet console / the falls are steep enthralls whole the core / the walls the more in number encumber / so I have learnt to excel my shell burnt umber / hell is eternal yet internal

14. Body Cheetah - "Rose & Bells"

Body Cheetah makes music of the subconscious, soundtracking the sounds that play in your head at certain times of the day. If you don't know about him yet, then it's about time you get familiar. Evoking both a videogame fever dream and a murky landscape, "Rose & Bells" is a unique look into Body Cheetah's world of sound. His hypnagogic and vapory songs may have already soundtracked one of your dreams.

15. Tim Hecker - "Black Refraction"

Tim Hecker's entire discography sounds like it came from another planet, especially his later stuff. Encrusted in ice, his foggy and glacier-like sounds range from monolithic to pint-sized, bringing forth an impeccably thick sense of atmosphere with both approaches. Virgins is his darkest record, but it also features the most recurring motifs and melodies of his output. The skipping, and occasionally struggling melody found on "Black Refraction" actually crops up on the album a few times, leading to a sense of deja-vu by the time it stretches itself over a whole track. It's one of his quietest moments, but it's also one of his most cinematic.

16. The Field - "No. No..."

The Field's music repeats constantly, proving itself capable of inducing a trance-like state. The fluttering "No. No..." slowly deconstructs itself, revealing skittering vocal samples, misty longing drifting in the foreground, and pulsing percussion. It's a warm showing of heart, even if it's bittersweet. As it reaches its ending crawl, it's as if it's waking up. Things don't always have to change up to remain interesting, and the twisted atmospherics of "No. No..." prove that.

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