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Press
I’ve told my story about how I discovered Sleepyard so many times on my radio show that I’d feel pretty bad if I told it wrong here. I was buying up stock from Mind Expansion Records (I mean a heap of CDs, not stakes in the company) through their Myspace page (this was before they launched their main page) and saw a cool name somewhere on there (probably leaving comments or something). It was Sleepyard. If you’ve read past posts on Crossfader.ca, then you know that sometimes what’s in a name is for me to delve headlong into a band. Oh, and did I ever. By this time, Sleepyard’s latest release was Easy Tensions, readily available to me (relatively – Sleepyard albums were released independently in Norway). I got that one first. The first two, Big Monday and Intersounds, would prove a little harder to find. Through intensive Googling, buried in searches, I found a listing for both CDs from a used music shop in Norway (which one I couldn’t tell you) for about 130 kr, shipping included. Score! Intersounds is where it started. An EP’s “worth” of tracks with a punk-rock running time of 35 minutes. The title track starts things off slow, with a watery and synthy ascent into space. The fuzz-bass becomes more prominent and sinister sounding as the song progresses, with shards of guitar and organ stabs cutting through the haze until we break through the atmosphere. Six minutes in, the song veers into into some serious Pink Floyd territory and begins its sprawl. It climaxes with a kosmische Godspeed You! Black Emperor density before its eventual come down/burn out. And that’s just the first half. “Watch Me” is the shortest song of the bunch, clocking in at six-and-a-half minutes. Mostly instrumental, save for the voice-in-the-wind repetition of the title, it’s a mix of The Bends-era Radiohead and the Brit-rock grandeur of Oasis and The Stone Roses. “Diamonds” begins with a Czukay-inspired bassline before the rest of the Sleepyard orchestra joins in. The interplay of guitars is frenetic, but never busy sounding or distracting, and the drumming is powerful and punchy. “Diamonds” smashes together punk thrash, spacerock soar, krautrock groove, and that “90s alternative” slacker-spazz, but that bassline, thunderous and reverberating, is the anchor; the carotid artery of the song. |
