Tapes » Museums Of Sleep – s/t

Museums Of Sleep – s/t

Museums Of Sleep – s/t C32 tape (Prairie Fire, 2010)

From the label:

Norwegian powerhouse Andreas Brandal (self-titled work, Flesh Coffin, Drevne Bolesti, Twilight Luggage, etc…) and Cole Peters (Gomeisa, Prairie Fire Tapes) collaborate to create MUSEUMS OF SLEEP.

Found on this first release taking stylistic cues from the filmography of the Brothers Quay, Museums of Sleep offers up highly textural harsh noise walls, full of complex subtleties and abrasive electronics.

The self-titled C32 lets loose two 8-minute walls on Side A, each letting Brandal and Peters stretch their muscles individually before the massive collaborative B-side. The 16-minute flip sees the pair fusing two 16 minute walls of noise together into one explosive collision of sound. Intelligent, overwhelming, and a must-have for HNW fanatics.

Reviews:

Musique Machine:

Museums of Sleep – Self Titled [Prairie fire Tapes – 0000]

Museums of Sleep brings together two of the most creative and respected minds in HNW and noise in genreal- we have Norwegian Andreas Brandal who is highly prolific and features in the following projects: Flesh coffin, Hour Of the Wolf, Drevne Bolesti, Avmakt. And Canadian Cole Peters whose is in the great & always inventive HNW/ Harsh noise project Gomeisa and runs the stasis label.

This is the projects début release, it comes in the form of a c32 tape, and it offers up a very brutal yet creative selection of three HNW based compositions. On the first side of tape we get a solo track a piece from both Brandal and Peter’s, and first up we have the Peter’s track which is entitled “And Suddenly The Air Grew Hard”. This first track opens with a few seconds of deeply creepy whispered foreign dialogue with background fire sounds, then there’s a sudden cracking noise and we’re dropped into this rolling, rumble and crusty ‘wall’ of tone which brings to mind several land slides happeing at once- yet there’s this really uneasy and creepy undertone running through the ‘wall’. As the track goes on into it’s forth minute Peter’s pull’s this raged and blurring chugging tone out of the rumble ‘n’ rolls which brings to mind hearing a stream train through a waterfall. As he moves towards the end of track he pulls out this billowing wind tunnel meets hacking static edginess. The track slides in just over the seven and a half minute mark.

Lastly on side one is of course Brandal’s solo track which is entitled “Rapunzel” and it finds him building this huge, dense and weather beaten wall of noise. The tracks built from this very dense, slow and hacking crusty tone repetition that’s under ran every so often by all manner of creaking, cracking’s, shifting, and possible sudden high billows/ moans- but those could be my mind play tricks with me. The track is amazingly thick, barren and truly unrelenting slice of HNW, and it brings to my mind footage of someone trying to make there way along the sea battered wall of a bleak & seemingly abounded castle.

Over onto side two and we of course have the track that both both Brandal and Peter’s have worked on and it’s a sixteen minute untitled track. The track starts out with this churning, aged drilling ‘n’ tank like thick wall of sound as it moves into it’s second minute a mid paced rolling ‘n’ crusty exhaust/ jitter type tone is growing and building from with in the dense drill/ tank trucks wall of tone. But nothing here is too defined or certain as the tones seem to melt, slice and slide into one another in a very nasty yet engrossing grey psychedelic noise sludge. The track gives one the feeling of been out in a battering and grey winter storm, but your brains deeply soaked in acid so the battering wind seems to seep and slip around your eternal organs, and the lashing rain seems to swish and batter the bottom of you skull and brain. Truly it’s a great and reality blurring slice of walled matter.

I expected great, great things from this collaboration and it’s certainly has met my expectations, and gone beyond them really This début album has managed to harness both of Brandal and Peter’s highly creative, distinctive and brutal sounds to create something that’s very different and unique- it’s both extremely harsh yet deeply atmospheric and at times greyly psychedelic. One of the HNW/ noise release of this year!

Rating: 5 out of 5

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