Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Laughing Stock — Life in Seven Dreams
(Apollon Records ARP094, 2026, CD / LP / DL)

Laughing Stock — Forgotten Dreams
(Apollon Records ARP, 2026, CD / LP / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2026-07-18

Life in Seven Dreams Cover artForgotten Dreams Cover art

For a band that put the word “laughing” in their name, Norway’s Laughing Stock doesn’t have much humor or lightness in their music. With Life in Seven Dreams, they’ve released seven albums, mostly concept albums dealing with dark and weighty topics. This new release continues that trend with eight tracks borne of difficulties the band members have been through recently. Chief writer Jan Mikael Sørensen is joined by Jan Erik Kirkevold Nilsen and Håvard Enge, with Nilsen handling the lead vocals; they all play a variety of instruments to fill out the sound, and Colin Bass provides spoken word parts taken from Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Dream within a Dream.” Musically, they cover a wide range of sounds, from long stretches of near-silence to delicate acoustic sections to heavy rock with harsh vocals, sometimes within a single track. It’s all very slow and moody, so listeners looking for music with energy or cheer need not apply. Personally I find the sudden contrasts to be jarring and unpleasant, making this an album I’m unlikely to revisit. Clearly it’s meant to be taken in as a whole, with the continuing parts of Poe’s poem scattered amidst the musical parts, sometimes at the beginnings or ends of tracks and sometimes in the middle. If the music was more compelling I’d be willing to make the investment of time and effort to decipher the emotional flow of the set, but nothing grabs me — or rather, any time something does grab me, just as I’m starting to enjoy it, they stop and throw in a bit of spoken word or drifting ambience. Apparently the sessions for the album also resulted in a number of songs that didn’t fit, either thematically or stylistically, and they’re being released as an EP called Forgotten Dreams in August. I find these four songs much more interesting and enjoyable, freed as they are of the concept, with “The Story” and “Midnight Air” being a significant step up from anything on the album. Maybe I’m just not in the right headspace for Laughing Stock’s brand of seriousness. Life in Seven Dreams certainly fits within the Norwegian atmospheric prog style inhabited by Bjørn Riis, Rhys Marsh, Ljungblut, and others, so if that’s your thing, give it a try, but I’ll take the EP any day.

Filed under: New releases, 2026 releases

Related artist(s): Colin Bass (Sabah Habas Mustapha), Laughing Stock

More info
http://laughingstock1.bandcamp.com/album/life-in-seven-dreams

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.