sleepmakeswaves – in today already walks tomorrow

This is a monster. Previously unavailable in the UK, hats off to Monotreme Records for a timely re-release. If the Australian instrumental quartet’s 2013 full-length debut And So We Destroyed Everything whetted your appetite for more, revisiting this 2008 mini-album is a must. It’s a guitar album; don’t let its wayward symphonics, its strings, its battery of time changes, percussion and sense of the epic (average track length is seven minutes) tell you otherwise. The interplay between Jonathan Khor and Otto Wicks-Green is, at times, staggering.

Its blissed-out euphoria recalls Sigur Ros; its dense musicality, Explosions in the Sky. Don’t be fooled by the abstract song titles, either. sleepmakeswaves avoid bombast and instead deliver works driven by composition and narrative. Passages and movements disconnect and resolve. The eventual return of the keynote motif partway through I Will Write Peace on Your Wings is enough to make you punch the air. Such is this remarkable record’s breadth and hold. [Gary Kaill]