Bipolar Explorer - Sometimes In Dreams (2018)

Their sixth album, DREAM TOGETHER praised as “Magical and majestic - an ultimate tour-de-force” by France’s Indiemusic; their double-album, OF LOVE AND LOSS (2013) - "The most significantly stirring and addictive musical accomplishment we've come across in some time. Taut, emotional, urgent and altogether haunting” - and its follow-up, ANGELS (2015) - “Electrifying, what music fueled by raw love and emotions sounds like” - each a Critics Pick for Best Albums of the Year by Ground Control Magazine, Bipolar Explorer are an NYC-based dreampop, post-rock group founded by Summer Serafin (vocals) and former Uncle frontman Michael Serafin-Wells (lead guitar & vocals, bass, percussion, tape loops, spoken word), notable for intimate, electric live performances, unimpeachable songwriting, uncompromising DIY ethos and their playing without drums.

Featured on the legendary Irene Trudel's show on WFMU ("America's best radio station" - Rolling Stone) who calls their sound "beautiful, great drifty pop, full of sadness and wonder", the band’s newest record, a double-album, SOMETIMES IN DREAMS, is released on Slugg Records New Years Day 2018.

Recorded, mixed and produced by the band at The Shrine in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, SOMETIMES IN DREAMS is the group’s seventh album overall and their third in just the span of a eighteen months.

In June 2016, the group released ELECTRIC HYMNAL, a sixteen track collection of devotional songs and spoken word (both secular and sacred) - a meditation and sonic prayer for their fallen bandmate, Michael's true love and partner, Summer Serafin - in a limited edition one-time pressing on CD only (no digital), offering it free of charge, as a gift of faith.

Again, praised by Ground Control: "...Get ready to be swept up and away by a prayerful reverie of melodies. Listening, I began to feel like I was flying. Don’t forget that Bipolar Explorer is a post-rock band. Low growling vocals, gnarly grinding tempos, rhythmic looping strands that escape and rise above the weight of this world, where angels and the living mingle…"

The interweaving of spoken word into the band’s work was explained by Serafin-Wells recently in conversation with USC filmmaker, Alexandra Dennis-Renner, who is making a documentary, "Sonic Prayer", about the band.

Having begun work on a live performance art adaptation of their double-album, OF LOVE AND LOSS - first presented as a "concert performance" in Brooklyn in October 2015, the project continued to grow with 14 new compositions and narrative underscored and seamless linking the work in a gapless and continual flow over two discs, becoming this very album. About the project, Serafin-Wells says,“the idea of a female voice, a spoken word narrator, came to mind. To tell the story in tandem with the band, supported by film projections. And once I wrote the narrative voice for the live Of Love, that just started to seem a natural thing, making its way into ELECTRIC HYMNAL and DREAM TOGETHER. Ya know? In that way that things sort of cross-pollinate through multiple projects. We were listening a lot to Laurie Anderson’s “Heart of A Dog” at the time and we kinda thought… yeah.”

In artistic collaboration with several visual artist friends of the band, all three albums - “Electric Hymnal”, "Dream Together" and “Sometimes in Dreams” are conceived for performance as live installation pieces, in intimate, non-traditional settings. Immersive and multi-media, this direction might well be seen as a natural outgrowth of the band’s perennial choice of performance setting - art galleries - and other non-traditional venues.

Forging an unique sound - described variously as shoegaze, dreampop, slowcore, post-rock and minimalist indie - well serves the new songs Serafin-Wells began writing in the aftermath of the tragic loss of the group's female vocalist, Michael's love and partner, Summer Serafin, who passed away after a tragic accident in 2011. She was just 31. At work at the time on a new record, the group eventually returned to those recordings, adding them to a handful of newly written songs post-tragedy and re-conceiving the album as both a testament and tribute to Ms. Serafin – muse, collaborator and True Love - yielding a double-album, Of Love and Loss, released to great acclaim in October 2012.

As Michael told Indiemusic’s Raphael Duprez in a feature about the band (February 2017): “All of this is entirely for her. I often say that our music, each album, is of, for and about her. It’s my way of telling people about her and talking to her myself. That’s the “for’ and “about” parts of the equation. And Summer remains an integral part of the band - not only as its inspiration but, because I have lots of her isolated vocals from other recording sessions - as her voice, both spoken and singing, graces each record. I’ll write songs and fly in her voice. Summer isn’t the main reason BPX goes on, she’s the only reason. She is the reason. And I think I can trust that I’m doing things for the right reason if I always know the reason for it is her. Not out of any ambition other than to honor and conjure her. She’s my conscience..."

Bipolar Explorer's releases include “Sometimes in Dreams” (2018), “Dream Together" (2017), "Electric Hymnal" (2016), "Angels" (2015), their holiday album - "BPXmas" (2014), "Of Love and Loss" (2012), the digital-only singles "Watchers and Holy Ones" (2017), "We'll All Go Together" (2016) and "Downtown Train" (2015) and their earlier (pre-Summer) debut "Go Negative". All titles are available on Slugg Records