Despite being midway through his seventies, minimalist icon Terry Riley shows no signs of slowing down or satisfying his searching experimental appetite. On Autodreamographical Tales Riley embarks upon a musical dream diary, a project initiated in 1996. The resultant pieces play out chiefly as spoken-word passages given musical accompaniment, with Riley scoring his own strange REM meanderings via an array of MIDI instruments and piano pieces. At various points during the course of the album you might find yourself wondering why none of your dreams are this vivid or quite so extravagantly surreal - or actually, perhaps they are, it's just that unlike most of us Riley has the good sense to transcribe them before they evaporate. While always vivid and engaging the tone varies greatly over the course of the record, from the almost Robert Wyatt-like electronic jazz weirdness of 'See Them Out There' to the beautiful and ornate piano music of 'A Dervesh In The Nursery'. You can plot a course through the record that starts out with knockabout, digitally sequenced surrealism and ends up in more earnest, reflective mood. This gives Autodreamographical Tales a satisfying narrative arc with plenty of balance, making for an album that's by turns funny and melancholic, but always inspires fascination.