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CD
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HUBRO 2616CD
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2019 release. Retro-futurist cinematic synth-fest from Supersilent keyboardist and composer, Ståle Storløkken. Just as radio drama is said to provide the best pictures, so some music can make for a perfect film soundtrack without the need for a film to exist at all. The Haze of Sleeplessness is a case in point: as the album starts to play, the listener's imagination kicks in and does the rest, supplying the necessary plot, character and setting until a full-scale narrative unspools behind one's eyes. A suite of seven movements whose common musical material is continuously recycled into new shapes and sounds, while recurring leitmotifs create a connecting thread of continuity, The Haze of Sleeplessness operates on several levels simultaneously. Most obviously, perhaps, it's an unapologetic synth-fest; a love poem to old-school electronica and analog sound whose squelches, bleeps and blurts can't help but recall the heroic era of Wendy Carlos, Vangelis, and Tangerine Dream. It's also a remarkably original and successful attempt at using by now antique instruments to form a true orchestral palette, building a symphony of sound through combining monophonic sources and their new digital variants into a densely populated audio landscape that is captured with astonishing sonic fidelity. The super-saturated surface of the music fairly crackles with raw electricity, as if the over-amped distortion was about to short-circuit itself, with a wobbly jack plug connection flickering dangerously before finally cutting out. That many of these sounds and their treatment can't help but suggest the retro-futurist setting of a dystopian sci-fi thriller might make the cinematic analogy inevitable, but it doesn't lessen the music's power or cheapen its effect.
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LP
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HUBRO 3616LP
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LP version. 2019 release. Retro-futurist cinematic synth-fest from Supersilent keyboardist and composer, Ståle Storløkken. Just as radio drama is said to provide the best pictures, so some music can make for a perfect film soundtrack without the need for a film to exist at all. The Haze of Sleeplessness is a case in point: as the album starts to play, the listener's imagination kicks in and does the rest, supplying the necessary plot, character and setting until a full-scale narrative unspools behind one's eyes. A suite of seven movements whose common musical material is continuously recycled into new shapes and sounds, while recurring leitmotifs create a connecting thread of continuity, The Haze of Sleeplessness operates on several levels simultaneously. Most obviously, perhaps, it's an unapologetic synth-fest; a love poem to old-school electronica and analog sound whose squelches, bleeps and blurts can't help but recall the heroic era of Wendy Carlos, Vangelis, and Tangerine Dream. It's also a remarkably original and successful attempt at using by now antique instruments to form a true orchestral palette, building a symphony of sound through combining monophonic sources and their new digital variants into a densely populated audio landscape that is captured with astonishing sonic fidelity. The super-saturated surface of the music fairly crackles with raw electricity, as if the over-amped distortion was about to short-circuit itself, with a wobbly jack plug connection flickering dangerously before finally cutting out. That many of these sounds and their treatment can't help but suggest the retro-futurist setting of a dystopian sci-fi thriller might make the cinematic analogy inevitable, but it doesn't lessen the music's power or cheapen its effect.
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