The Most Obscure Band I’ve Ever Written About
Camp Trash guitarist Keegan Bradford recently started a Bluesky thread for his fellow “music nerds” to share that “one band/album they feel like absolutely the only fan of.” The responses have been a veritable cornucopia of obscure and unsung artists, including The Great Depression, Halloween, Alaska, and My Favorite as well as some true Chrindie gems like Rose Blossom Punch and the mighty S.S. Bountyhunter.
As a music nerd myself, I naturally had to join the fun — and one artist immediately leapt to mind. I’ve reviewed and written about many obscure and unsung artists throughout Opus’ long run, but if I had to pick the most obscure artist I’ve ever written about, then Lucid would be at the very top of the list.
Formed in 1993 by multi-instrumentalist and sound designer Dale Lloyd alongside guitarist Stuart Arentzen, singer Rebecca Bird, and pianist Mark Taylor-Canfield (to name a few contributors), Lucid released a pair of sublime albums in the mid ’90s that haunt me still to this day. 1994’s Baby Labyrinthian and 1996’s Idylls and the Secret Remain — both of which were released on Lloyd’s æ label — are the two albums that immediately come to mind whenever I think of “experimental” music, even after three decades.
The group’s songs and sound collages — which blend field recordings, musique concrète, various instruments (e.g., guitar, bass, drums, piano, zither, violin, melodica, celesta), radio signals, and partially obscured vocals — can be ominous, serene, eerie, or playful, and usually some combination thereof. While you could certainly describe Lucid’s music as “otherworldly,” that would be an understatement. With their field recordings and surreal arrangements, Lucid’s songs often feel like little worlds in and of themselves. One song might conjure up a Twilight Zone-esque noir while the next suggests an eerily bucolic English countryside, a Victorian sitting room for ghosts, bizarre subterranean explorations, or a toy store springing to life at the stroke of midnight.
(Given their music’s illusory quality, it’s not surprising that Lucid also performed live soundtracks for art installations as well as silent movies, including F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Yasujirō Ozu’s Passing Fancy, and Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage.)
Indeed, I often feel in need of a transitional period after listening to Lucid’s songs. They’re so self-contained and imagistic that you’re left a bit unsure of the world’s solidity. Subsequently, returning to reality is a bit of a shock. (Song titles like “Mine on I and Mirror the of Side Your on You,” “Entrust Not in the Illusory,” “The Reverberation of His Day,” and “Baptised in Memory” only add to that effect.) Such musical hauntology is fairly commonplace nowadays, due in no small part to the work of the estimable Ghost Box label, but Lucid preceded Ghost Box’s formation by a decade.
Prior to calling it quits in 2001, Lucid released two more albums: 2000’s Aurora Sunder and 2001’s Magnabella, which were released as limited edition CDRs on Lloyd’s Overheard and Rendered label. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to acquire copies of those albums. Like their predecessors, they’ve long been out-of-print and are not officially available on any platform. As there are no current plans to reissue any of Lucid’s recordings — so far as I know, anyway — that leaves their fascinating catalog all but impossible to hear in its entirety.
On a related note, Dale Lloyd and Stuart Arentzen were in another group called After the Flood that also released albums on the æ label. Their 1996 self-titled debut (itself a reissue of a 1991 cassette release) contains many of the same haunting soundscapes heard on Lucid’s albums, only channeled through proper songs, some of which are almost poppy and radio-friendly — relatively speaking, anyway. 1998’s collaborative After the Flood 2, on the other hand, is more varied and experimental thanks to contributions from Bowery Electric, Cindytalk’s Cindy Sharp, His Name is Alive’s Warren Defever, Labradford, and Windy & Carl.
Like Lucid, After the Flood’s catalog is out-of-print and unavailable on any platform, making it equally inaccessible. Which is a shame because these two bands have created some of the most intriguing, enchanting, and yes, otherworldly music I’ve ever heard. Suffice to say, if I ever won the lottery, I’d definitely shell out some serious money to help reissue both Lucid and After the Flood’s catalogs and ensure that they finally received their due after so many years in obscurity.