01. Anniversary 02:06
02. Eko duo 03:14
03. November 04:48
04. 88 04:04
05. Paint 03:46
6. Soleil 04:46
07. Ocean 02:420
08. Palm lines 05:18
09. 66 03:21
10. 77 03:37
11. Silver cars 05:14
12. Trash 07:10
13. Other planet 07:35
p.30 Make Ready Peter Maybury ISBN 978 0 9566293 3 3, Gall editions, 2015
“Following an interview about my work published in Emigre #45, Rudy offers to publish the début album of my solo music project Hard sleeper. I’m asked to make a publication to accompany the CD, with the invitation to ‘think lots of pages’. ‘Hard sleeper’ is one of four express train compartment classes in China, and the one in which we had most frequently travelled on a recent trip. The book presents a visual travel account, intercutting dislocated images as if memory, dreaming and waking have merged. Although the sounds are uniquely generated, the music has a bricolage quality. Each track is constructed from a beat or pulse, onto which successive layers are added to and subtracted from. The album is made on a hard disk recorder, a piece of digital equipment which employs the analogue tape machine as metaphor. It has a physical mixing desk with pots and faders, but there’s a very small screen and the interface resembles 16 strands of cassette tape running in parallel. Working visually is awkward: it’s best when you work without a grid, scrubbing through the sound to find precise entry or exit points, creating loops and refrains as if cutting and splicing magnetic tape. Without exact maths behind this method of assemblage, there’s some slight slippage that belies the digital making.”
The Irish Times 10.01.01
HARD SLEEPER * * * *
Hard Sleeper
This debut outing from acclaimed Dublin graphic designer Peter Maybury is an engaging slice of dark electronica, and one that straddles a nebulous boundary between minimalist techno and American lo-fi. Maybury offers a spry twist on the ambient dance pioneered by Warp stalwarts Boards of Canada. Repeated listens expose deeper ambitions, however. An accompanying booklet, produced with Californian design magazine Emigre, confirms Maybury's post-rock leanings. At a time when too much Irish music strives towards humourless 'authenticity', Hard Sleeper exhibits a heartening zeal to push boundaries and challenge expectations.
Edward Power
The Event Guide 24.01.01 - 07.02.01
HARD SLEEPER
S/T [ Emigre ]
Hard Sleeper comes to you courtesy of Dublin graphic designer Peter Maybury and Californian multimedia publishing house Emigre, and is the concluding part of that label's Dreaming Trilogy, comprising a thirteen-track instrumental CD accompanied by a 72-page book of visual images. There is an edgy paranoia to this music that veers from fractured ambient blasts to intense chaotic noise Alleviated occasionally by guitar chords that sing when speaking, Maybury's intention seems to be aural dislocation. Isolated parts jump out, come into focus and die away again. Fragments of old analog synths, splashing Chinese cymbals and sinister bass noises function as sonic landmarks on a rail journey across an unfamiliar landscape, destination unknown but fearsome. The sound of what it might feel like to sleep on Saturn.
Lee Casey
Hot Press 14.03.01
HARD SLEEPER
'Hard Sleeper' [ Emigre ]
Let's be clear about one thing : Peter Maybury is one talented bastard. Not content with composing, performing and engineering the entirety of this album, he's also seen fit to take care of design and photography duties on the accompanying lusciously-produced 72-page book, and with the Emigre seal of approval to boot. The abstraction of the packaging is no superficial distraction, mind you - Maybury's experiments with form are applied with as much care to the core of the music as they are to its container. It's all densely-textured hedmusik for sure - but how does it fare against the other (gulp) post-rockers on home turf? In common with many of its more obvious reference points (Tortoise, Rothko, Third Eye Foundation, even the bould Jim O'Rourke in one of his less melodic guises), 'Hard Sleeper' anchors most of its more difficult wow and flutter to a solid, cyclical set of rhythms. When it's at its best, as on '88' or the deliciously subdued 'Trash', this approach is extremely effective, by turns hypnotic and desperately unsettling. A fine headfuck if that's what you're angling for, Hard Sleeper's brand of horizontal academia will reward close listening.
James Kelleher