The audacious composer Max Richter has created an eight-hour piece meant to serve as a sleep aid. But it is more than that. For these 31 uninterrupted pieces, Richter accepts the extraordinary challenge of not only aiding sleep but also translating the act into art. If you listen while you’re awake, many of these pieces conjure dreamy states, where ideas seem fluid and flexible and the world around you seems somehow softer.
It is hard to know what to make of Sleep, the new eight-hour album and therapeutic project from the perennially audacious British composer Max Richter. On one hand, the purpose is simple: Richter intends for the listener to press “play” on the full-length digital version, nod off to sleep somewhere between the patient piano chords of “Dream 1” and the vocal-and-organ ululations of “Path 3,” and re-emerge after eight hours of music to a gentle crescendo of stretching strings, wordless harmonies, and long-tone bass near the close of “Dream 0”. By consulting with famed neuroscientist and past collaborator David Eagleman, Richter has created a slow-motion, electronics-and-chamber-ensemble hybrid meant to reinforce and reflect natural sleep cycles. “An invitation to dream,” Richter has called it.
On the other hand, the third-of-a-day span between the beginning and the end isn’t some inert, sustained tone, simply meant to maintain a snooze. Instead, it’s an ever-shifting set of meticulously performed pieces that both affirm and expand Richter’s reach as a composer. He webs together string quartets and electronic drones, tense duets for piano and violin, and somnolent keyboard meditations. Richter brings most of his interests as a composer to bear here, too. He blends an Arvo Pärt-like sense of motion with deep, low notes and shimmering drones that reflect his past in electronica and adoration of Brian Eno. His love of high-minded concepts, previously reflected by the likes of his essential The Blue Notebooks, meets his exquisite, human touch as a pianist.
-pitchfork
You can support my work here:
Check out for free and or Subscribe to my Patreon Page with exclusive Patron Only media here: https://www.patreon.com/JasonBickford
Single contributions welcome at PayPal : https://www.paypal.me/JasonBickford
source
