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Cesspool Dreams — Stranded Islands
(Bandcamp no#, 2025, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-07-12

Stranded Islands Cover art

Could there be a more disgusting name for a band or project? And what about that album title? Well, put that aside for a moment, hold your nose, and find out what might be on offer here for the intrepid listener. Cesspool Dreams is a music-plus-spoken word project of one Jeff McLeod, an artist we have covered a few times before in Exposé. Last year we reviewed his albums Not Good Enough and Joyless Noise Vol.7, but Cesspool Dreams is clearly something very different from those. The project has been ongoing for about six years, the idea being to combine improvisation with spoken words. The eight tracks each feature different voices from guests who deliver the lyrics; the one thing that all the voices have in common are that (based on the speakers’ accents and pronunciation) they are from the southeastern USA — McLeod’s home studio ‘The Subversive Workshop’ is based in Alabama, after all. The music style varies from one track to the next, though it seems to be all improvised using guitars, analog synthesizers, raw electronics, noise samples, effects, and treatments, all presented in a very experimental way that would be quite interesting by itself, but mix in the spoken words (some male, some female) and it all becomes a swirling mix of dark unusual sounds and voices. McLeod calls Cesspool Dreams his “drone/analog synth/psych guitar Southern Gothic spoken word group” — Stranded Islands is  the third full album, plus there are about half a dozen single tracks available as well on the Bandcamp site; you can click on the “lyrics” link to the right of the track and expand it to see the complete text of each track, if you are so inclined. Tracks like “When I Lose Things” and “Buckets” pretty much are like complete stories being read, while others like opener “Lydia,” “Run Off” and “In the Parking Lot with a Vape Pen Listening to Doom Metal” are a bit more fragmented but no less interesting. So one can listen to this and interpret it as some kind of psychedelic dream, although the lyrics from one track to the next don’t really follow any concept per se, it does all make sense somehow, in that a similar approach is taken. Recommended. Sample it at the link below.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Jeff McLeod

More info
http://cesspooldreams.bandcamp.com/album/stranded-islands

 

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