Customer Reviews

Sleeps With the Fishes

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't know how I ended up finding out about this but as soon as I did I ordered it. I am extraordinarily surprised I had not heard of it before. It just goes to show that no matter how hard you look there's always something fantastic right around the corner!

If you like the "4AD sound", the first 2 Clan of Xymox albums, This Mortal Coil, etc this is an absolute must-have. Slow, serene, peaceful, gorgeous, ultimately satisfying. This is definitely one of those albums that gets you right from the first track and holds on till the last. Not a misstep along the way. A mix of vocal tracks and instrumentals keeps both from disappearing into unheard background music.

Highly recommended!

If want to get into other universes without drugs, just buy this CD. Pieter Nooten (Clan of Xymox) with Micheal Brook (some works with B. Eno and many more) made The Perfect 4AD Sound Album. Just turn off the light, eat cinnamon chocolate and listen.

It's not music for relaxation. It's music for stimulating mind and imagination. It takes listeners far beyond known emotions.

Marcin Mastykarz

actually i know pieter nooten quite well. he is a friend of mine so i guess i am not objective. what i do know is that a lot of people credit michael brook for the music on this album to much. pieter was and is to much of a private person to protest to this historical mistake, so i guess i'll have to stand up for him: every track and every note on this album is written by him. i know this because i worked on some (demo) tracks with him and co-wrote some of the arrangments. this guy breathes melodies and harmonies! a genious who has been sadly forgotten. michael was and is a better networker, more famous i guess etc., but the way he just made this piece of art his own is typical for the way people treat eachother in this business: use and abuse.

If you like the sound of the first two albums of Clan of Xymox, you should like this album. In fact, several of the tracks here are re-arrangements of one's on those albums. Nooten's hauntingly off-key vocals and melodies really took me back to the days when I first discovered Xymox. In fact, many of these tracks would sound excellent fitting in between any of early Xymox's more up-beat pieces. Get it while you can!

Dear Chaps! I recomend Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook's LP "Sleeps With The Fishes". Although released nearly twenty years ago it's as fresh as can be. If you take bits & bobs from Depeche Mode, Sylvian, JBK and Eno & Budd you've got the essential ingredients in the this hybrid of mellow "third world war dinner pop" and "music for films 5". Straight people might find it depressing but believe me it's not, the chords (simple), melody (even simpler) and the general mood is full of hope and beauty. Seldom has a record done what this one's done for me... made me realize that I have to change.

Henrik

Sleeps With The Fishes is a very unique album. The atmosphere of its music is ambient and listening to it puts you in a meditative drifting away space, but there is a lot going on here. Pieter Nooten was and is a synthesizer genius able to create these beautiful emotional moments by...simple means. Michael Brook brought just as much to this table by the gorgeous production of this album, besides his beautiful guitar sounds we can hear. This was the first album Michael had ever produced and it is done in a very ambient way. Often the sounds and instruments we are used to hearing at the background come forth and take over our attention. One single finger touch of a string instrument adds so much to our experience because the vibration of that string is where Michael directed our focus. That is one of the unique aspects of this production. This entire album is extremely low in tones. To me this music appears as if to belong to some... cellosphere. These consistent low tones add to the ambience left behind. Some of the short instrumentals are almost like echoes or after thoughts, additions to other songs. Pieter's vocal seems to go out of its way to sound as even and uneventful as possible which just adds another layer to the ambience left behind. The overall mood is rather solemn so please make sure that you don't mind spending time inside of such landscapes, and that their atmosphere does not depress you. This is music for people who don't lament or get bored at funerals but attend in festive mood to wish farewell to their deceased. Listening to this album puts you in a perfect space to think about the other side if life. And the more time you spend considering the hidden and unknown the better prepared for it you are, obviously, and the more withdrawn from all those things which start to matter less and less to you.
When Sleeps With The Fishes came out in 1987 a year after Medusa it had only reinforced my feeling of where a lot of magic of the first two albums of Clan If Xymox was coming from. There was no place for Pieter in the new then commercial stage of Xymox of the following years. I have a feeling that staying for too long in the situation not complementary to the growth of his musical spirit might have caused its... withdrawal and subsequent absence. I am sorry Pieter, but looking at this situation from the outside, while listening to Sleeps With The Fishes one can't help reflecting on the past 22 years. I have not missed the greatness of this album from the start, but it does seem unfortunate that in 2009 we still have to be focused so much on that single event. Again, I have a feeling that if I was evaluating this album back in 1987 and looking forward, my prediction would have been better yet work coming to us from the genius of Pieter Nooten. I do like Ourspace a lot but I would not be surprised at all if we still saw an outburst of great work coming out of you again. Your old friend Frank Weyzig in collaboration with Carlo Van Putten is about to surprise us with an amazing album of White Rose Transmission - Collector Of Souls in a few months. Perhaps 2010 might be a perfect time for you as well?

If you like Michael Brook, you'll like this album. I first heard a track from it on the Music for Vampires compilation, then a cover of another track on a This Mortal Coil album. I was intrigued and got it. Every track lived up to my expectations. The album, with recurring themes, is a conceptual one; the mood is lush and melancholy, with Brook's Infinite Guitar, violas, violins, chellos, woodwinds and tasteful synthesizer painting serenity. SWtF is half instrumental, half sung. Pieter Nooten is a synth player with Clan of Xymox, and one Xymox song is covered here ("After the Call"). A beautifully understated album with an uncluttered classical feel.

This album takes a bit of getting used to but ultimately it is worth it. It is music to get lost to. Someone needs to make a film using this music cos it is so evocative and emotional.
I wish Pieter Nooten had gone on to release more albums in this vein but from what I hear he is still active in the music industry. This is certainly an album to be proud of anyway,,,

I've heard it for the first time more than ten years ago, and since that moment I have never left it. It is timeless. It handels the cords of inner time. It swallows you to a place with no frontiers and plenty with only music and sensations. Intimate music. You will find yourself inside the music or the music inside you... No limits...Pure Mystic. Electronic and acoustic (drums and cello...WOWWW!!!) in a perfect mix. It's perfect... I love it.

Anyone looking for CDs in the same vein as Eno's Another Green World or Before & After Science will be well served here. Since Brian doesn't really do this sort of thing anymore, we must look elsewhere to scratch that itch. Michael Brook is a past collaborator with Eno, and it shows here. Sleeps with the Fishes swirles with ambient soundscapes, bits of "infinite guitar" and is a mix of instrumental songs and gentle vocals. Some tracks would fit equally well on the aforementioned Eno CDs, or with Brook's own excellent Eno collaboration, Cobalt Blue. I must confess ignorance as to Pieter Nooten and the group he hails from (Clan of Xymox?), but at least as much of the songwriting is attributed to him as to Brook. Since the information provided in the CD booklet is about as minimalist as the musical material, it's hard to say just what the instrumental breakdown is between the two of them.

Beautifully rendered, and very easy on the ears.