eMusic Review 0
The title may sound dreary and grammatically clumsy, but Music to Fall Asleep is anything but. Produced by Sebastian Meissner (Random Inc., Bizz Circuits) under the alias reserved for his nominally "ambient" releases, the album does, in fact, make a wonderfully soothing bedtime soundtrack, but its richness of detail and powerful subconscious tug invite, and perhaps demand, daylight rewinds. Clearly influenced by Brian Eno's Music for Airports, Meissner sends lone guitar plucks spinning into an ether of dub delay and digital effects. His pacing owes much to Harold Budd's measured, fluid sense of tempo, using echo and reverb to slow the apparent passage of time, but his tones are pure 21st century: like Fennesz, Meissner uses his computer not as an instrument of precision, but rather as a means for smearing sound into a scratchy, resonant haze. Acoustic guitars creep like morning glory over sampled strings; sometimes, ghostly vocals or piano seem to murmur in the background, but ultimately it's almost impossible to determine the specifics contributing to Klimek's rolling, wind-tunnel drone. Impossible, at least, when awake: listened to horizontally, this captivating album unlocks a world of hypnagogic logic.
