Direwires & Freder at Robotopera: Sleeping Near Highways

Direwires is Adam Young of Ontario, a recording artist (12k, Mutek, Webbed Hand) and founder of Robotopera, the Netlabel this beautiful EP was released at (it’s a sad thing the label is on hiatus right now, but maybe they’ll be back some day). Anyway, Sleeping Near Highways is a collaboration-project from Young and label-buddy Freder who travelled Canada for a while and found themselves, well, sleeping near highways during that time. Their music is made of delayed synth-chords, field-recordings and a lot of space between the tones. Some kind of aural tour-diary which reflects the eerie feeling of being away from home, bored and trapped somewhere alongside the road.

Prelude to Sleep is a simple composition that’s mainly based on a LFO- and filter-modulated synthsound. Like one of those hypnotising spirals, it makes you forget everything around you. Processed field-recordings support this effect. Very warm, very relaxing, though there’s some kind of bad premonition left- this sleep will bring you nightmares. Glowing through Eyelids is the awaking afterwards. Like the song of a bird when the sun rises, morning rushes in with tender synthesizer-chirping. But soon, reverberated and delays field-recording take over and make you remember where you are. Near the autobahn. While this tune could have been released on Autoplate without a problem, most of the other songs on Sleeping Near Highways contain certain elements of experimental Rockmusic that make them harder to categorize. Think of Do Make Say Think, think of Chicago, the Constellation-label from Canada or 70’s Krautrock (Imaginary Romance e.g. sounds like a druggy mixture between Kraftwerk and Harmonia).
Close the Door, Drive at position four is another example for the slender effectiveness of Young and Freders’ composition-skills. The howling synth beneath the filters, a looped guitar that sounds like jingle bells, very smooth and clever chord-changes… astonishing. Probably the song that suits the artwork best: pounding rain, and the road won’t end. The EP surprises with a dubby twist at As a Group. A stoic loop marched ahead, shy glitches float it around like ghost lights. There’s something archaic, something tribal about this tune. Quite obstinate sound. Sleeping Near Highways fades out with a rather improvised jam on field-recordings and filter-sweeps (Loyalists).

Due to obvious points like a highly individual sound, interesting song-structures and the pretty loose genre-assignment, Sleeping Near Highways caught me because of rather emotional aspects. I feel like I know what Young and Freder want to express. How many albums do you know you can say this about?

Get the record here: Sleeping Near Highways
Direct download: Get the zip-file!