UK imprint Whitelabelrecs’ fourth installment of their sleeplaboratory series continues to build on the founding formula of compiling mostly label acts in service of a kind of sonic sleep aid. As the title indicates, the ambient offerings are meant to soothe as opposed to jar, a formula consistent with the wider genre of non-threatening ambient electronic music. The 14 tracks on sleeplaboratory4.0 lean heavily toward an aesthetic of lo-fi fuzziness and tape-saturated warmth. Many of the individual songs are indistinguishable from one another, or rather, transition without any great pronouncement, clearly a desired effect of trying to put listeners to sleep. I must confess that after repeated listens, I did not succumb to the laboratory’s wishes, though that is no slight on the part of the compilation. There is simply too much textural breadth on sleeplaboratory4.0 to send the act of listening into an unconscious drift.
Things begin with the glitchy, 90s-like “Yarmouth” by Michael Scott Dawson, announcing the decidedly nostalgic character of the sonic material to follow. In this respect, there is nothing groundbreakingly new here, no surprises up sleeplaboratory4.0’s sleeve. Lilting synths supported by hazy washes of processed sine waves, like the layers on Will Bolton’s “Drowse” that just barely hold together, folding over one another without ever achieving full saturation. Standout tracks include Giannis Gogos’ “Lost Tapes” – yet another titular nod to the comp’s stated aims – which introduces a slowly plucked guitar within its fabric of wow and flutter, and Tatsuro Murakami & Shuta Vasulkoch’s “Harmonius”, which transposes the open chorded structure of “Lost Tape” onto keys. Wodwo’s “Cocteau Summers” is a self-admitted nod to the 80s pioneers of the warbled tape aesthetic, where the entire piece feels as though it were submerged in water. This is symptomatic of sleeplaboratory4.0 as a whole, which pulls apart individual notes without succumbing to arpeggiation, careful not to impose a repetitive pattern on the heavily processed source material.
Maybe the criteria are too rigid for sleeplaboratory4.0, which either succeeds or fails based in large measure on its ability to the induce the desired state: sleep. While the individual tracks hint toward new sonic terrain by dint of their contemporary acts, there is little here that reinvents the ambient wheel, opting instead for a carefully curated rehash of lo-fi, atmospheric music, reminiscent of the pre-digital, post-tape era. Fans of early Labradford will certainly appreciate this nostalgic take on the soundtrack to those once-popular sleep raves, which you can now enjoy via sleeplaboratory4.0 all be yourself.
