Undergoing an experience not unlike how Brian Eno came to his own experiments with ambient music, finding himself deaf in one ear and now hearing sound differently before, not to mention suffering auditory hallucinations, Jon DeRosa experimented with making music in an attempt to make sense of these disconcerting experiences. In that creative and therapeutic place No Solace in Sleep was born.
Twenty-five years on from this extraordinary, in the very real sense of the word, debut album, it has been remastered by ambient/electronic pioneer Taylor Deupree a process which has unlocked an even brighter, deeper, broader, and stunning sonic experience.
As the name he chose for the project suggests, this this is an album that creates a tonal painting of chilled and near-silent places: the cold embrace of the ocean depths, the bleak vistas of extreme ice-scapes, the primal emptiness of the earths remaining white wilderness, but also the stark beauty of such places largely untouched by human hands.
“Glacia” evokes the subtle sounds of nature, of ice slowly melting, of glaciers imperceptibly moving, of mountains growing, of a landscape whose evolution is measured in decades, centuries, millennia. The beguilingly titled “You Have Cured a Million Ghosts From Roaming in My Head” is a coiled and spiraling web of sounds and droning washes, and “Welcome Home” sees guitar chords turned into shimmering colors, notes dancing across our consciousness like the Northern Lights across dark, star-stabbed skies.
No Solace in Sleep could best be described as music as art, sound as emotion, and creativity to build a connection with an earlier and unspoiled world. Rather than a series of songs or tracks, this is a sonic experience, and what an experience it is.
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