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LP
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DE 298LP
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"Doc Sleep returns to Dark Entries with Cloud Sight Fade, an album of ethereal house and techno. Doc Sleep is the alias of DJ and producer Melissa Maristuen. Following 2023's Birds, her ambient and IDM-leaning debut album, Cloud Sight Fade shows Doc drawing on her years of queer clubbing to bring seven diverse tracks sitting between muscular New York house, Berlin twilight techno, and funky West-coast breakbeats. Production began in the Bay Area and was completed in Berlin; Maristuen says that this work became a love letter to the West Coast's magnificent natural landscape, the light of the Pacific sunrise. While draped in dreamlike textures and melodies, this is also a record about embodiment and the memories that live within corporeal forms. The powerful grooves on the breakbeat-inflected 'Lemon Zest' and the propulsive 'Cloud Sight Fade' remind listeners that dance music is for bodies dancing. Meanwhile, tracks like the sparkling album-closer 'Enchanted Static' or the brooding groover 'Water Sign' plunge listeners deeper into hypnotic depths. On Cloud Sight Fade, Doc Sleep guides through slumber and wakefulness, in and out of bodies, with the mastery of a seasoned DJ and clubgoer."
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LP
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TARC 002LP
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Tartelet present the debut album from Doc Sleep -- ten tracks of exquisitely rendered melodies and rhythms shaped with grit and beauty in equal measure. Birds (in my mind anyway) is a widescreen vision of electronica as a medium to express your personal situation and respond to your environment -- a rave adjacent art form free from the perceived rules of the dancefloor. To date, Melissa Maristuen, known as Doc Sleep, has established herself in the context of the club -- first engaging with the culture in San Francisco before moving to Berlin. She helps run the Room 4 Resistance party, DJs on Refuge Worldwide, co-owns the Jacktone label and has released on Detour, Dark Entries, and her own label. But in making Birds (in my mind anyway) she set herself an ultimatum. "At the time of recording this album, my life, all my routines and priorities had to change -- music was no exception. I decided if I couldn't be happy making an album free of the dancefloor, I was finally going to be done with music. Instead, I found a musical voice free of tempo and textural restriction. Eventually, I had a sound, and once I had the sound, the album came pretty quickly. It was a very different process writing music for no one -- except myself." If the impression given is one of a consistent style across the album, think again. Doc Sleep moves freely between tempos and themes, even if there are some recurring qualities binding the music together. She weaves fluttering arps with poise, lending them an almost choral quality which gives the album a very human touch. But they're equally emotionally ambiguous or pockmarked with sonic interference -- reflections of the collisions and conflicts that typify the human experience. Every inch of the album is a personal touch -- the title was pulled from Doc Sleep's mother's response to hearing the album, while her friend Kiernan Laveaux offered a beautiful text which appears on the back. Those closest to her all fed into the artwork process, which captures the curious dichotomy between urban brutalism and botanical finery often found in the parks of Berlin -- a vital place of respite when she was making the album. Features Glenn Astro and M Marie. For fans of: Ciel, rRoxymore, Skee Mask, Glenn Astro. Edition of 300.
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