DJ Olive – Sleep (Room40)

It’s rare that you’ll come across music explicitly designed not to be listened to. Yet Sleep is much more about what it can do for you than how it sounds or the techniques Olive puts into practice. Sleep is a sleeping pill, constructed in the aftermath of September 11 and given to his friends in New York on cdr to help them sleep. Or perhaps more importantly to help them when they woke up and couldn’ get back to sleep Its genesis however goes back further to the late nineties when the New York based Olive was Djing ambient sets at sleeping parties, where people would bring a bunch of food, sleeping bags and just crash out listening to ambient tunes all night. And it’s a very peaceful outing, an ethereal wash of ambient atmospheres poking gently around. It’s not particularly musical, freed from melodies, chord progressions or beats, and the sounds seem to be moving without developing per se, despite possessing the illusion that we’re getting somewhere albeit slowly via a series of suites. Only one track clocking in at 48 minutes, it’s virtually impossible to listen to the whole track, even when you’re not in bed. Doctors should be prescribing this disc to insomniacs. Sleep actually predates Buoy, another sleeping pill issued by Olive on Room40 a couple of years back, and is actually more subtle, more stripped back and in a sense more effective. Sleeping with sleep is incredible, its ability to lull you back into slumber via its warmth and patience once you have woken is unparalleled. This is a very special work.