What with my current Deaf Centered musical fixation, I’m probably beginning to come across like that drunk man you see every day at the bus stop, you know the one who is locked in a perpetual rant about how immigrants are ruining the country, taking jobs from good hard-working natives like him.  I’d like to think that I make my case with a little more coherence, with a damn sight more sense, and (fingers crossed, still a couple of paragraphs to go) without falling foul of any race relations legislation. 

The debut album from terrifyingly talented 18-year old Greg Haines Slumber Tides is not only released on Deaf Center’s Miasmah label, it has been produced by Erik Skodvin himself; hence it was bound to attract my attention.  It sits closer to Deaf Center’s oeuvre than the recently-reviewed Skodvin (as Svarte Greiner) masterpiece Knive, being a painstakingly constructed (not scored; some improvised themes and drone sections were recorded and rearranged into these forms ex post facto) and arrestingly dramatic quasi-classical work, with pieces ranging from those built up from single cello lines through some near chamber pieces to dense electronic orchestral passages.

The manipulated minimalist cello of “Snow Airport” indeed conjures up stark icy images against its background hum of technology.  Wordless vocals entice us towards the deceptively flat panorama of “Submerge”, the overlapping string drones coalesce as we slip in and out of hypothermic illucidity; we collapse, dreaming of snowy white birds, and hoping for home.  The bells of the lush “Tired Diary” awaken us like smelling salts, our heads ring with the overload of information streaming through our still-slitted eyes. “Arup’s Gate” starts us walking again gingerly, more bells, cello drone and glacial vocals, but then some sort of flashback; soon we are screaming, panicked by sirens, and need the elegant reassurance of “Caesura” to get our heads right. 

Slumber Tides is like a Himalayan Trek – it will thoroughly drain you, but on the way you will experience some dramatic vistas and giddy euphoria; when it is over you will most likely want to do it all over again.  Even if you have lost both legs to frostbite.

Listen to an mp3 of “Snow Airport” here
Listen to samples of more tracks at Greg Haines’ website
Buy it from Boomkat, like what I did