El Cielo (album)

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El Cielo is the second album from the American progressive/alternative rock rock band, dredg. It was released on October 8, 2002 on Interscope Records. Like dredg's first album, Leitmotif, El Cielo is a concept album. The title can be translated to mean "the sky" or "the heaven" in Spanish, and to mean "peace and freedom of expression" in dreams.

Inspiration

One of dredg's main influences on the album, El Cielo, was a painting by Salvador Dalí entitled Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening, which is also what the acronym in the first song on the album, "Brushstroke: dcbtfoabaaposba", stands for. The painting clearly influences many of the album's core themes and song titles. For example, in the painting there is a long-legged elephant ("An Elephant In The Delta Waves") with a papal insignia upon its back. "The Papal Insignia" was a song recorded for El Cielo but only saw release of Industry Demos, recorded in 2001, and didn't make it onto El Cielo. Also pictured in the painting is a woman lying in a canyon: "The Canyon Behind Her" is the title of the last song on the album.

This is further supported by the translation of the Japanese spoken words from the beginning of "The Canyon Behind Her": "This album was inspired by a painting titled 'Dream Caused By the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening'. It is recommended that you view this painting as you listen to El Cielo. It is as if one stimulus awakens other senses. In other words, it's about 'drawing music'".

Band members have also been quoted as saying that this Dalí painting symbolizes sleep paralysis, a literal representation of the condition from which Dalí's wife actually suffered. The booklet with El Cielo contains letters written by sufferers of sleeping disorders with descriptions of various experiences with or relating to sleep paralysis. Singer/Songwriter Gavin Hayes incorporates and expands upon the material found in the booklet for the lyrics to the album. All of the songs on the album (except the instrumentals, obviously) contain snippets of the text in the booklet.

Recording

The album was recorded at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio, CA, and at Longview Farm in North Brookfield, MA. Producers included Ron St. Germain, Tim Palmer, and Michael Rosen.

El Cielo has also been released in the SACD format. This particular disc is a multi-channel hybrid SACD. It is playable as a standard CD in a normal CD player. However, in an SACD player, the album is played in high resolution audio with surround sound.

Song Details

The song "Brushstroke: Reprise" can be divided in two parts, the first part is a 40-second alternate version of the song "Same ol' Road" (hence the title "reprise"). The second part is an extract from a song called "Wind at the End", which was recorded by the band but not released on any studio album, EP, or DVD.

A demo of the song "Of the Room" appeared on their 2001 Industry Demos EP, and later on Extended Play for the Eastern Hemisphere.

Packaging

Early pressings of El Cielo were in a digipack with pictures of clouds bordered by runes. Later pressings of El Cielo are in a jewel case. The cover of the later versions is the cover of the booklet, which is a sort of brown leathery texture with the band's name and the album name on it (although jewel case versions with the "clouds" cover are known to exist). The image provided on this page is the cover of the digipack version. The booklet which came with versions featuring the "clouds" cover are in full color, the booklet included in copies featuring the "brown leather" cover are in black and white, except for the limited digipak version. This version has a clouds packaging with the brown leather booklet in full color. All releases of the album contain the same disc except for the limited jewel case version, which disc is yellow and white and the SACD version which is an all-white gold disc with blue writing.

Rumors

Rumors about El Cielo synchronizing lyrically and tonally with the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind began circulating through internet forums in 2005. However, any instances of synchronization are quite clearly coincidental, as both the album and the film were in production at approximately the same time.

Track listing

All tracks are written by dredg

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Brushstroke: dcbtfoabaaposba"	0:57
2.	"Same ol' Road"	5:14
3.	"Sanzen"	4:34
4.	"Brushstroke: New Heart Shadow"	1:33
5.	"Triangle" (Listed as "Δ" on the CD cover)	5:03
6.	"Sorry But It's Over"	4:08
7.	"Convalescent"	3:32
8.	"Brushstroke: Walk in the Park"	1:40
9.	"Eighteen People Living in Harmony"	4:28
10.	"Scissor Lock"	3:23
11.	"Brushstroke: Reprise"	1:33
12.	"Of the Room"	3:44
13.	"Brushstroke: An Elephant in the Delta Waves"	1:47
14.	"It Only Took a Day"	3:16
15.	"Whoa Is Me"	5:36
16.	"The Canyon Behind Her"	6:40

Personnel

• Gavin Hayes – vocals, acoustic guitar, mandolin
• Mark Engles – guitars
• Drew Roulette – bass
• Dino Campanella – drums, piano

Additional musicians

• Ron Saint Germaine – vocals
• Zack Hexum – saxophone
• Greg Ellis – percussion

Music videos

• "Same ol' Road" directed by American McGee.
• "Of the Room" directed by Ben Rehki.

External links

• A good resource for Sleep Paralysis, one of the themes of the album
• El Cielo at MusicBrainz (list of releases)
• Analysis of El Cielo