No Solace In Sleep

Album Review

As shoegaze and drone-rock stop being trends and start being continual influences and terms as much as, say, "ambient," more and more musicians find their own way to work in such continuing traditions. Jon DeRosa, aka Aarktica, is one of them, and on No Solace in Sleep, one of his first efforts under that name, he explores the realm of feedback-induced drowned sound with as much grace and loveliness as one could hope for. Anyone who enjoyed the Cocteau Twins' underrated effort with Harold Budd, The Moon & the Melodies, will find much to love here — while sonically they're not the same, the same hush and beautiful depth from that record has a definite echo here, suggesting dark waves pushing through a bottomless ocean. That the first track — one of three that break the ten-minute mark — should be called "Glacia" seems perfectly appropriate. "Inebria," another of the lengthy cuts, isn't drunk-sounding as such, more a strange, alien float into some unknown distance. The album is in many ways of a piece, with the flow of soft swells rising and falling throughout in an hour-long meditation, but there are more than a few moments when DeRosa softly spikes the brew. "You Have Cured a Million Ghosts From Roaming in My Head" employs an audible and overt guitar melody, as well as texture, a short but distinctly lovely effort (if it's directed at someone in particular, that person's one lucky soul), while "Welcome Home" also sets straightforward electric guitar strum first and foremost to create another lovely combination of melody and sonic wash. In what might be an innocent reference but could also be a sly joke: One track is called "Indie" — though the combination of soft vinyl crackle, buried drumbeats, and extended guitar and keyboard tones certainly don't sound like Superchunk, say.