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            Hypnogogia – that strange state between wakefulness and sleep – is exactly what this album strives to bring you. Created by Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat (under the moniker Lucky Pierre) with the intention of making it the perfect album to fall asleep to, Hypnogogia’s warm blend of soothing, downbeat tracks works with a surprising degree of success.

            With the energetic, pumping start from the album’s opener ‘Angels on Your Body’, however, you might find it hard to imagine being asleep anywhere near its march of 80s claps and cymbals, let alone falling asleep to it. Yet, wrapped up in loops of saddened synths, it works as an introduction to the template for the album: a texture sewn together from downbeat and classical, a plenitude of swirling, hypnotic strings and often tacky (albeit atmospheric) drum samples.

            The twinkling, chiming harps, xylophones, and bells of ‘Nurse Flamingo’ (a mass of overlapping, lush sounds), begin the process of putting you at ease. Its drowsy guitar lick inebriates until the track gradually mounts up to heave into the next: the heavy, resonating strings of ‘Shatterproof’. One might begin to wonder how the drums manage to work the way they do on this album at all – alone, they would sound cheap and simple, but embedded in the hum of the sleepy, orchestral waves of the LP, they maintain a solid rhythm that may indeed be responsible for its overall charmingly sedative effect, like the fuzz of an old vinyl or half-tuned radio.

            Though Hypnogogia also gains a lot of its relaxing qualities from its repetitiveness, this album is capable of allowing a climaxing rumble to vanish into a hushed, echoed piano key at any point, without warning. By the time ‘The Heart of All That Is’ comes along, the LP has already established itself as an unclouded, soothing tranquiliser. As if Moffat had in mind a waterfall where angels bathe, there’s a wonderful, dripping flow to this track in particular, making it difficult for you to not feel serene as the green forest on the CD’s sleeve.

            Whether it’s a hi-hat pressing on monotonously, some mysterious, hushing sample, the bow of a cello slowing moving from side to side, or the isolated shrill of an opera singer, the sparseness increases until, by ‘White Heaven in Hell’, it becomes extremely hard to stay awake. As the lazy horn of ‘Bedwomb’ (an extremely appropriate title) droops over in the mid-day sun before dying out, meditating on the most simple few keys of a piano, Lucky Pierre has achieved a lovely, perfect stillness of sound – you just not might be awake to appreciate it.

Artist / Group:
Lucky Pierre
Album:
Hypnogogia
Label:
Melodic Records
Released:
2002

Popularity: 1% [?]

             One of the high points of Television’s “Marquee Moon” is its arsenal of amazingly streamed guitar solos; yet for all its scouring scales and gritty, tight riffs, at no point does it come close to getting messy. Each track is a slick, well-honed number that sounds so tidy and calculated that it gives you the impression that they have been rehearsed endlessly in a bid to attain perfection. Simple measures, blistering lead guitar dives, harmonies called out from the flanks in the background — there are times when you can even name individual songs of other bands that must have been influenced by this sound (Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers).

             From the smooth, sultry “Friction” with its clambering, dark streets, and eyes “like telescopes” rolling out under the reverberating guitar, to the slithery moonlight of “Elevation,” the sound continually sweeps together to help mould Television’s own distinct place in the punk/rock canon. A perfect balance is forged out between the plodding bass and hammering guitar on the title track (an interplay very much responsible for the album’s hypnotic execution), the guitar driving upwards out of the priceless clefts Verlaine sets up for himself, after singing: “I was listening, listening to the rain / I was hearing, hearing something else.” A classic by itself, the song is gradually built up to a weighty, thumping climax, before bowing out in a haze of shimmering sound, only for the reins to be coolly taken up again as the beat begins once more.

             On the softer, more intimate ‘Guiding Light’ the edge is slightly removed from Verlaine’s typically ’strangled’ vocals, sounding filtered in comparison, yet fitting in comfortably with this slower number. Following the almost ska-infused ‘Prove It’, the theatrical ‘Torn Curtain’ is the perfect closer to what is effectively a hugely important, yet highly overlooked, album — one whose influence is difficult to overestimate in rock’s development.

Artist / Group:
Television
Album:
Marquee Moon
Label:
Elektra
Released:
1977

Popularity: 1% [?]