The Helsinki-based dream pop band Eidetic Dreams is releasing its debut album Shields. The record is the result of four years of work by Siiri Kähönen and Antti Heikkilä, who found each other in 2022 through a shared musical ambition. Neither had prior experience with recording programs. Their first home demos gradually evolved into a finished album, while the two-person project grew into a full-scale live band.
The duo describe themselves as soft-hearted and cite friendship, idealism, and the belief that good people ultimately win as the foundation for their music. “We don’t mind if someone thinks our music is naive. There's room for naivety in this world. It can also be wisdom. Keeping romance alive in today’s world takes quite a lot, and that's exactly why it's a radical act and a statement,” they say. The title presents gentleness as a means of protection: each song is meant to be its own shield behind which one can retreat for a while. The name of Fever Ray’s album Radical Romantics also contributed to the inspiration behind the idea.
Making music gave the singer a new direction and made her own ambitions feel important. Both musicians experienced recording as a way to postpone adulthood. The lyrics preserve experiences from childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.
The arrangements draw influences from shoegaze and pop melodies. Around twenty different guitars unite bright melodic lines with distorted layers of baritone guitars. Most of the bass sounds come from the duo’s small Korg synth. The drums mix samples with acoustic recordings, with big percussion sounds and production influenced by the 1980s. The release is also classified as indie rock and indie pop.
The album’s featured track, “C.L.C.,” is about lasting love, living legends, and the desire to live a life beyond the ordinary. The songwriters were drawn to exceptional life stories, even to the pain that can accompany them. The song is one of the more acoustic tracks on the record and features drum fills by Mikke Repo as well as a slightly out-of-tune piano that doubles a distorted guitar theme. The drummer also appears on tracks two, three, and six. Other songs, in order before and after the featured fourth track, are “Drive Me Far,” “The Sheets,” “Sin Sisters,” “Corinna,” “The Truth About My Fall,” “Iron Monster,” and “Eidetic Dream.”
The two founders have composed and arranged all eight tracks. The singer also plays piano, while her bandmate handles the guitars; both contribute synths and synth bass. She has written all the lyrics and shares lyricist credit with him on the second track. Co-producer Aleksi Skippari plays synth bass and contributes samples throughout the record, plays synth on all tracks except the fourth, and bass on the sixth and seventh.
The co-producer also oversaw the recordings, which took place at Lammaskallio Audio in Tuusula and Playhouse in the Finnish capital. Jukka Heikkilä mixed the album and Totte Rautiainen mastered it. Ahead of the release, the group has received attention through Spotify’s international playlist Fresh Finds, YleX, Radio Helsinki, and the music magazine Soundi.
