Words by Nick Mee. @Nickjmee
Just for clarification, this isn’t strictly a review – Max Richter’s instrumental lullaby is eight-hours long, and my critical faculties tend to wear-out a little before that. Yet his ambitious project is worth bringing to the attention of any fellow insomniacs for whom counting sheep and chamomile just don’t cut it. The trailer alone [below] for what is the longest continuous piece of music ever thought to be recorded is soothing enough to marginally descend those eyelids after barely 90 seconds, so there’s plenty promise here. As the avant-garde composer Richter says, “For me, ‘Sleep’ is an attempt to see how that space when your conscious mind is on holiday can be a place for music to live.” For those of us whose conscious minds tend to go for a fag break outside the fire exit rather than a fortnight in the Caribbean, ‘Sleep’ could prove a bedtime boon. It’s released on 9 September, so plenty of time to reposition the hi-fi to your bedside, or invest in some moulded earphones, and allow Richter to gently infiltrate your semi-consciousness…
'Sleep' is out on Deutsche Grammophon on 4 September