You're gazing at a horizon that seems to go on and on forever. Each twist of your head teleports you somewhere else. Every tap of your foot bounces you higher. Stop! Haul yourself away from that pleasant drum patter, you are not its slave. Ignore those rhythmic patterns you hold so dear. Please, pay attention, ignore that grass munching Disney deer. Hell-o? Where are you now? There are no hedges, no curbs and no harmonies here. There are no butter-dripping riffs. No succulence. Wait! Is this is that grey concrete town that David Lynch built and quickly deserted? Seems like his memory still hums like tinnitus. That casino has seen better days... Is this a pre 'post-modern' parallel universe that is yet to see Twin Peaks? This isn't the new David Lynch album...? Oh... really? Why can I still see Bob creeping behind the sofa? Why does this feel like a world within a world except it's a universe within which Laura Palmer never breathed a sigh of relief?
As you wake up, the memory is fading fast. Every breath erases an imagined fragment as something or other dissipates. No, no, no that isn't your alarm buzzing. Sorry but it really isn't easy easing you in to Forever (the debut LP from Austin-based artist Stefanie Franciotti aka Sleep Over) with broad brushstrokes...
Dreamlike free-form word association is all well and good but THE POINT is that you have to hear this. As soon as you do you'll need to have it drenching your ears next time the sun rises or decides to set in that pinky-orangey melony hue. You'll wanna walk around a supermarket with the battery of that future-phone purring in your pocket, your headphones wobbling, your sensory experience drifting away from the aisles of tins and tumbling back into the dream. As you hit play or skip or rewind your brain'll float on a sea of tv fuzz. You'll want it to stop, like the dream within the dream within the nightmare...
Yeah, feedback implodes... Everything loops in on itself. Blackholes and repetition. Sunsets. Apple pie... Yeah, Sleep Over are that droning hum you never thought you would or could love. It's music better suited to galleries than tube journeys. Songs like 'Romantic Streams' with their gooey structures tease you into a false sense that this is some glorious meditative trip to drift along on. The whole record surfs on that almost anonymous passing sound (a dog barking; a road being drilled; an upstair neighbour clambering around) you've been successfully blanking out. They've looped and looped and reflected and looped and reversed and reverb-soaked every ignorable noise and in its place created a hazy whirl of repetition. It's a squall that gets louder and louder and the dissonance becomes white noise going purple, green and twilight blue. There's a vague facsimile of something that should be an annoyance but that comes out like pure, simple and unadulterated ambient lushness... It's all an echo of an echo of an idea you've felt but never heard before. And damn right you don't know whether you should love or fear it. Headphones on. Close your eyes... where are we now?
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8Sean Adams's Score