The Dictionary of Lost Meanings

As a duo, PRAED’s music has always felt gloriously overwhelming: hypnotic, frenetic, driven by clarinet lines that spiral over pounding electronics and rhythms that seem engineered to push trance into overdrive. Albums like Doomsday Survival Kit thrive on that kind of intensity, built on the long, psychedelic compositions that engulf you in ecstatic repetition. On The Dictionary of Lost Meanings, the duo expands into whole orchestra, with core members Raed Yassin and Paed Conca welcoming players such as Sublime Frequencies‘ Alan Bishop on alto sax and vocals, Youmna Saba on electric oud, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh on vocals and electronics alongside additional reeds, strings, vibraphone, percussion and synths. 

But more doesn’t necessarily mean bigger. Rather than amplifying the noise, the album scales back, leaning into a subtler, steadily accumulating tension. Rather than overwhelming you in a single rush, it draws you in gradually, tightening its grip through small details. With its shadowy, slowly unfurling soundscapes, opener “Mirror House” feels like an immediate departure from Pread’s previous work, while in the next track “Djinn Dance” the duo’s familiar processional throb and clarinet motifs return. But as the piece gathers momentum, the strings rise above the percussion, spiralling outward and swelling with a quietly ceremonial energy. The album peaks with “The Spell,” which begins with a spectral synth drift, taut syncopated percussion and an expectant horn refrain before expanding into a tangle of interlocking melodies. But even the record’s most restrained passages carry a quiet magic: “Three Dimensional Realities” drifts like a half-remembered dream, its reeds and strings dissolving into a faintly hallucinatory haze. Some moments are almost completely silent, yet they carry as much force as the duo’s most explosive passages, proving that intensity doesn’t always arrive at full blast.