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Underground > Radio & Music >

Music to sleep to

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:15 / 10.10.04

I don't know if you're like me (for your sake, I hope not), but I find it very hard to get to sleep in silence. Somethimes I'll leave the radio on, but often I'll end up staying awake listening to it. If this happens, I have a selection of favourite "sleep" CDs, which do the trick. (Not cos they're boring, mind... I'll also listen to them when I'm NOT trying to sleep, and they don't knock me out or anything).

At the moment my fave bedtime listen is the second CD of Techno Animal's "Re-Entry"- appropriately titled "Heavy Lids", it's great. Broadrick and Martin do the full-on isolationist thing- faraway bells, a synth drone that sounds like wind across the tundra- I wrap up warm with that and it feels like being a kid tucked up in bed when there's a storm outside.

I'm also quite partial to Current 93's "In A Foreign Land, In A Foreign Town". Composed to accompany a series of Thomas Ligotti stories, it's very ambient, very spooky, and tends to give me very interesting dreams.

I like to turn them way down low, so you have to put just a leetle bit of effort into hearing them.

Anyone else got any recommendations? (I work a night shift, so anything that'll help me sleep is GOOD.)

12:45 / 10.10.04

Susumu Yokata's album Sakura is incredibly soporific ambient music.

Anything by Nick Drake, though Five Leaves Left is my favourite.

I've never really enjoyed sleeping to music but I find Love Spirals Downwards very sleepy.

13:38 / 10.10.04

Yeah, I started using music to sleep to when I was doing some night shifts a few years ago. Since then I've found it hard to sleep without something playing, at just the right level... I find that anything long and repetitive/minimal should do the trick. A very slow groove ought to send you off. Although, I did once manage to drift off whilst listening to Iron Maiden's Live After Death, but it might just depend on how drunk you are...

It's probably changed my music buying habits a bit, purposely buying more ambient electronica than I might have done before.

Some favourites that always work:
Papa M - Live From A Shark Cage
Aphex Twin - SAW2
Isan - Clockwork Menagerie
Brian Eno - Music For Airports
Mum - Finally We Are No One

And recently:
The Album Leaf - In A Safe Place
Juana Molina - Segundo
Mira Calix - 3 Commissions

Sweet dreams...

13:53 / 10.10.04

A friend of mine bought a CD by the band Cloggs not too long ago and we both have still not managed to stay awake for the entire lenght of the album (mind you, we tried more than once).

Haus of Mystery

21:22 / 12.10.04

Animal Collective's 'Campfire Songs', an acoustic job recorded, I think, in a barn or conservatory, always does the trick. The sound of rain thrumming the roof of wherever they're playing is simply lovely.

21:37 / 12.10.04

Paul Weston's Music for Dreaming, of course!

Foust is SO authentic

00:13 / 13.10.04

Easiest answer is the Lost in Translation soundtrack.

06:36 / 13.10.04

Yes, but only if you programme out the Phoenix track and don't get suddenly awoken by More Than This...

07:34 / 13.10.04

Nick Drake definitely - although I'd go for Brighter Later...
Kings of Convienience- Quiet is the new loud... more very quiet nice peaceful stuff- i can't even listen to it at work otherwise i'm snoozing on the job..
Beach boys - Pet sounds- it makes you feels safe and happy...
Sparklehore- Its a wonderful Life more weepy mellow sadness.

08:49 / 13.10.04

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

It's like eating cheese before bedtime. Interesting dreams....

09:27 / 13.10.04

I find it very difficult to go to sleep with music on. If something's got even the remotest hint of melody or structure of change, the act of listening to it will tend to keep me awake.

The only stuff I can sleep to is totally comforting and un-threatening ambient stuff (Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld springs to mind) or totally formless drone whiteout, but obviously most of the latter is a bit unsettling, so I tend not to for fear of bad dreams.

When noise from outside is keeping me up, I often sleep with radio static on - even at a low-ish volume it drowns out most random urban night time noise and after a while you don't even notice it's there anymore.. if you can get a good, dead frequency it can be lovely - like electronic waves breaking on the shore.

16:05 / 16.10.04

Future Sound of London - The isness.

I once fell asleep listening to Pink Floyd Meddle, and all was fine and mellow, until the crows started screaming and I woke up, feeling like I was in a nightmare

All Acting Regiment

19:47 / 16.10.04

Nick Drake, you can start off listening to the words and then let the music take you.

14:50 / 17.10.04

Ulrich Schnauss is a particular favourite of mine at the moment, kind of My Bloody Valentine crossed with the Orb, with lovely melodies and really interesting ideas, though tucked way down low. First album is Far Away Trains Passing By, and I prefer it to the follow-up In A Strangely Isolated Place, though both are great. On City Centre Offices, though I think In A Strangely.. is about to be reissued on Domino.

Am corrently waiting for Eno/Fripp's Evening Star to arrive from Amazon, though it's been three months - the tracks I've got off it already are pretty good. I also just found the FFWD album, which was basically Fripp, Thomas Fehlman, and the Orb; it was tucked away in a record shop in the shadow of the Great Orme in Llandudno.

In keeping with the North Walian theme I've just dredged up, the Infinity Chimps first album is electronic and really rather nice - it's basically done by John Lawrence, ex of Gorky's Zygotic Mwnci. The Chimps are now a folky/acoustic prospect, but this first album is laptop squiggles aplenty. I think its actual title is an infinity sign (an 8 lying down, basically), but it's also known as the Egg LP or just self-titled as Infinity Chimps. On Sylem.

More in keeping with the industrial ambient stuff mentioend at first is an LP I reviewed the other week, by Boyd Rice/ Non - which is a collection of loops, drones and weird noises which scares me a little bit but some will probably find quite soothing.

There's an ambient thread knocking around in the Music archives too, IIRC - from a long, long time ago when I was just a wee overenthusiastic Barbenipper rather than a grizzled lurker....

19:31 / 17.10.04

BBC News 24 - it certainly makes for interesting and current dreams.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:28 / 18.10.04

More in keeping with the industrial ambient stuff mentioend at first is an LP I reviewed the other week, by Boyd Rice/ Non - which is a collection of loops, drones and weird noises which scares me a little bit but some will probably find quite soothing.

Heh. I'm also supposed to be reviewing that, but... it's in one of the many packed boxes in nwhich I moved house, so it's proving a little tricky. As is making up excuses for why I haven't written the sodding review yet!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:29 / 18.10.04

I assume you're talking about the new compilation, anyway.

Good, isn't it?

stephen_seagull

18:11 / 18.10.04

My current sleeptime listening is Sufjan Stevens' 'Greetings From Michigan The Great Lake State', but I'm thinking of changing soon to Wilco's 'A Ghost Is Born'. Both CDs tend to help me relax.

No star here laces

08:21 / 19.10.04

I only sleep with music on aeroplanes. But in that environment I find minimal clicky house to be quite the thing. Good choices are "The button down mind of Daniel Bell", Michael Mayer's "Immer" and Triple R's "Friends".

Haus of Mystery

17:05 / 19.10.04

I actually find I always seem to wake up right near the end of music and films that I stick on to fall asleep to. I like to put on music if I'm having a siesta, so i can drift into that lovely interzone between sleep and consciousness. Lovely.

Locust No longer

23:42 / 20.10.04

I stick generally to low drone music like Mirror or Jonathan Coleclough. Although, sometimes a lot of that stuff gets really intense around the twenty minute mark and I wake up screaming.... well not really, but it does lend a certain something to your dreams. I also like to fall to sleep to a lot of the really quiet improv made by people like Taku Unami and Mark Wastell. Unami's got this album called "Music For Whitenoise" and it's fantastic--little splotches of fuzz and splinter, sometimes barely audible.

20:13 / 29.10.04

BOARDS OF CANADA - MUSIC HAS THE RIGHTS TO CHILDREN IS THE BEST MUSIC TO NAP TO EVER

23:07 / 29.10.04

Do you mind not shouting? We're trying to sleep here...

subcultureofone

23:55 / 29.10.04

gilt trip - steven and russell kilbey
the sea & the rhythm- iron & wine
the troubled sleep of piano magic- piano magic
jack frost-jack frost (steve kilbey & grant maclennan)
dreamweapon- spacemen 3

00:54 / 31.10.04

Play Vaughan Williams' Antarctic Symphony, not that it's not fabulous but it has a wonderfully drifting-off and doing the Captain Oates succumbin-to-hypothermia vibe. You'll bew aslkeep bneforew you get to the excellent "The Cathedral" movement.

Other favourite sophorific music is the soundtrack, by fab
German 70's band Popul Vuh, to Herzog's Nosferatu: the Vampyre.

Otherwise, silence is golden. If you can minimise Ganesh's snoring, that would do. And stop him chanting "Babydaddy, do it to me, can I wear your hat?"

08:58 / 01.11.04

I stick generally to low drone music like Mirror or Jonathan Coleclough. Although, sometimes a lot of that stuff gets really intense around the twenty minute mark and I wake up screaming....

Yes, I get the same thing - no Sunn o))) before bed.

Also has bad experiences with an Acid Mothers Temple track that starts with about 12 minutes of beautiful meditative synth loops, and then with no warning at all it suddenly turns into the most horrific feedback void-drone ever, raising the volume by a factor of 10.... aaaaggghh!!

...

This weekend I bought a copy of "Inducing the Sleep Sphere" by The Land of Nod which, as the name rather heavily implies, is absolutely perfect for drifting off to sleep. I guess they're sort of exploring the no mans land between Tortoise and Ash-Ra Tempel.. and finding it full of fog and icebergs and featureless arctic wastes.. lovely.

03:52 / 02.11.04

Sigur Ros was working for a bit, then Mogwai took their place. Recently I've been listening to Yo La Tengo, Stereo Lab, Calexico, Dirty Three, etc. Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Mum, The Album Leaf are good recommendations. SONIC YOUTH! Believe or not for some reason I can sleep well to 'Bad Moon Rising', 'Daydream Nation', 'Sister', and 'Washing Machine'. I want to hear that Paul Weston 'Music for Dreaming'.

14:13 / 06.11.05

Ian Nagaoski Warm Coursing Blood is a must have and best of all it's free. He creates this sea of sleepiness from messing about with lo-fi modulators.

Also if streaming music is a possibility Sleepbot is probably worth a shot. They even give a reference for the loudest point of the broadcast so you don't get any nasty surprises.

17:22 / 06.11.05

anything by Mice Parade usually works quite nicely as well, I've found

23:10 / 06.11.05

Dilute: Grape Blueprints Pour Spinach Olive Grape,
Its lovley and cosy, sounds like the inside of a kittens head as its waking up at christmas. the vocals are slightly twee but it doesnt spoil it.

The Return Of Rothkoid

01:23 / 07.11.05

John Kilbey's Catching Some Z's (his apostrophe, not mine) is fabulous for this.

A lot of stuff on the Webbed Hand Records netlabel is great, too - and it's all free to download!