Angels & Airwaves - The Dream Walker [Indie Exclusive]

The Dream Walker is the leanest, sharpest record Angels & Airwaves ever made. Released at the end of 2014 and recorded almost entirely by Tom DeLonge and Ilan Rubin at Jupiter Sound, it stripped the band down to a duo and the songs down to their most direct form.

Rubin plays nearly everything that is not a guitar, and his fingerprints are what make the record move. "The Wolfpack" is the closest AVA ever got to a straight rock single, all snap and momentum. "Tunnels" and "Paralyzed" keep the widescreen atmosphere but tie it to actual choruses, "Teenagers & Rituals" opens the album with genuine urgency, and "Anomaly" closes it in the reverb soaked territory longtime fans expect. Aaron Rubin engineered and mixed alongside Tom Lord-Alge and Alan Moulder, and Brian Gardner mastered.

It arrived alongside the animated short Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker and charted higher than anything the band had done in years. Most fans point to it as the best late period AVA album, and they are right.

This indie retail exclusive comes on spring green vinyl, mastered at Bernie Grundman and GZ Media, pressed in Canada. A limited color run of a record that deserves the treatment.