The Sleeper Wakes

Marc Barreca's 1986 album "The Sleeper Wakes". Originally released on cassette by the Seattle electronic ambient label, Intrepid. Very subtle and quiet music by a sound artist and synth-head Marc Barreca. He is usually associated with K. Leimer’s Palace Of Light imprint and Seattle’s small, but very distinctive experimental and ambient music scene of the late 1970s and 80s. Barreca has a small, but very strong and surprisingly (for ambient music anyway) varied back-catalogue, which in the last couple of years has been revisited by a number of reissue labels. For examples of the above see Barreca’s playful “Music Works For Industry” (1983) on RVNG / Freedom to Spend and vinyl-ized editions of his tapes on Vinyl-on-demand. “The Sleeper Wakes” was also a tape-only release for Jeff Greinke’s label Intrepid (reissue comes on Scissor Tail) and showcases Barreca’s experiments with the rudimentary samplers (Akai 610) and analog sound processing. The result is a collection of fragile and intricate soundscapes where the focus is on the acoustic properties of multilayered and slowly shifting sonic composites. Some of the tracks seem to be employing the samples of tuned percussion (“Out Delphi”) and sound as if you are listening to the unstructured gamelan music underwater. The effect is highly calming and instantly relaxing. To be fully appreciated this music needs to be heard in the headphones, but it works just as beautifully being part of non-aggressive sonic environment. - Snows ov Gethen