- Audio CD (8 Mar 2010)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Label: Grandpa Stan Records
- ASIN: B002XGIHO0
- Other Editions: MP3 Download
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 180,569 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
London band The High Wire have created a perfectly
pleasant debut album with the thirteen tracks
collectively entitled 'The Sleep Tape'.
In listening to it from top to tail twice in
succession I found that I had not nodded off at all.
This is uncomplicated and nicely old-fashioned music
which had me thinking about any number of 1960's US
West Coast bands with long hair, love in their hearts
and a light touch with lush vocal harmonies.
The band are, substantially, Stuart Peck, Alexia Hagen
and Tim Crompton. Ms Hagen and Mr Crompton's vocals
work beautifully together. As an ensemble their sonic
inventions are strong in melodic ideas and of sufficient
rhythmic difference to sustain attention for the duration
of this substantial set.
Against a background of jangling guitar and reedy synth
the fragile but warmly focussed vocals spin a dense web
of dream-like and smile inducing atmospheres.
The simplicity of the tunes are their greatest strength.
'It's No Secret' is a delightful creation celebrating the
advantages of holding on to the things we love most.
One kiss does not have the same value as another (allegedly).
'New Lovers' is a very pretty miniature full of gentle
breathy reflections. It comes and goes through the mist
in not much more than a minute but leaves a wave of
powerful emotion in its wake.
'A Future Ending' is the album's most substantial composition
and one of its most raucous. It rolls along on a big grinding
riff and demonstrates the band's ability to throw just a
little bit of darker energy into the mix. The brief howling
guitar solo at the heart of the maelstrom is a hoot!
Conversely 'Leave Me In Love' is as delicate as a shaft
of sunlight shimmering on a rock pool. A truly lovely song.
Final track 'Bodyclocks' is a wonderfully ambiguous conclusion.
An instrumental sounding like a room full of musical boxes all
playing along together for no one's amusement other than their own.
The High Wire more than deserve their place in the listening world.
Recommended.
pleasant debut album with the thirteen tracks
collectively entitled 'The Sleep Tape'.
In listening to it from top to tail twice in
succession I found that I had not nodded off at all.
This is uncomplicated and nicely old-fashioned music
which had me thinking about any number of 1960's US
West Coast bands with long hair, love in their hearts
and a light touch with lush vocal harmonies.
The band are, substantially, Stuart Peck, Alexia Hagen
and Tim Crompton. Ms Hagen and Mr Crompton's vocals
work beautifully together. As an ensemble their sonic
inventions are strong in melodic ideas and of sufficient
rhythmic difference to sustain attention for the duration
of this substantial set.
Against a background of jangling guitar and reedy synth
the fragile but warmly focussed vocals spin a dense web
of dream-like and smile inducing atmospheres.
The simplicity of the tunes are their greatest strength.
'It's No Secret' is a delightful creation celebrating the
advantages of holding on to the things we love most.
One kiss does not have the same value as another (allegedly).
'New Lovers' is a very pretty miniature full of gentle
breathy reflections. It comes and goes through the mist
in not much more than a minute but leaves a wave of
powerful emotion in its wake.
'A Future Ending' is the album's most substantial composition
and one of its most raucous. It rolls along on a big grinding
riff and demonstrates the band's ability to throw just a
little bit of darker energy into the mix. The brief howling
guitar solo at the heart of the maelstrom is a hoot!
Conversely 'Leave Me In Love' is as delicate as a shaft
of sunlight shimmering on a rock pool. A truly lovely song.
Final track 'Bodyclocks' is a wonderfully ambiguous conclusion.
An instrumental sounding like a room full of musical boxes all
playing along together for no one's amusement other than their own.
The High Wire more than deserve their place in the listening world.
Recommended.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Really cool albmum. I love the mix of harmonies and cutting guitar riffs. Definately one of the most refreshing and inspiring albums I have heard in a long time.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Reputedly borne of all things somnolent, and written during those moments when sleep just won't come, The High Wire's debut LP proper floats suitably into being. Picking up where the warm strings of the Ahead Of The Rain mini-album left off, The Sleep Tape starts in disappointment with "The Midnight Bell". Lazily flirting with indie ambience, it fills itself out with hazy melodies and boy-girl harmonies thanks to mainstay Tim Crompton and newer member Alexia Hagen. It's worrying close to Morcheeba, enlivened only with a strong and spiky string repeat. Luckily for The High Wire, it's also unrepresentative.
Much better is the lush songwriting of "It's No Secret" which, sparse on arrangements but strong on melody, brings to mind Sufjan Stevens' pretty "Chicago" in its sun-kissed diaphanousness. Entirely more urgent is "Odds & Evens". Bobbing along on fuzzy guitar and highly credible (and appropriately-influenced in name) The Sleepy Jackson impersonations, its poppy key changes and slight bubble of country-rock also recall underrated Saddle Creek outfits The Elected and Rilo Kiley. It's a trick carried from earlier in the album, as the sunny rhythms and harmonised jangle of "Hang From The Lights" prove. Later still, the pedal-steel and acoustic strumming of "Letting In The Light" reprise the sound once more, coming seemingly sprinkled with the same magic dust as newcomers Cults on their impeccable debut single "Go Outside".
The Sleep Tape doesn't stop there, jumping just an alt-country bandwagon now long since disappeared into the sunset. The reverbed guitar edge which loiters in "Hang From The Lights" lends the track the slightest of sedentary shoegaze notes - a blissful wash woven into its enviable melody. The title track itself is shoegaze-ier still, full of warm drone, vocal reverb and a decidedly Black Rebel Motorcycle Club bass-line (presumably thanks to sharing a producer in Rik Simpson). It's a sound worth repeating, and the slow, rocking plod of " A Future Ending" runs with it. Tempering the track with boy-girl vocals, it comes happily to rest in Black Angels-like psych-rock and light drone.
Though, just as sleep on a warm evening can prove hit and miss, so does "New Lovers". Rising and falling on fuzzy organ, it's thankfully short and unnecessary. Also paling in comparison is "Honeycomb". Wading in chilled out instrumental indulgence, it's neither as Sigur Rós as intended, nor is it fit for dinner party muzak.
These mistreads aside, The High Wire have made giant steps since the relative anonymity of Ahead Of The Rain. They've created an identity, albeit taken from others, and inhabiting a space between sleep and dream they more than make it their own.
(7/10)
Much better is the lush songwriting of "It's No Secret" which, sparse on arrangements but strong on melody, brings to mind Sufjan Stevens' pretty "Chicago" in its sun-kissed diaphanousness. Entirely more urgent is "Odds & Evens". Bobbing along on fuzzy guitar and highly credible (and appropriately-influenced in name) The Sleepy Jackson impersonations, its poppy key changes and slight bubble of country-rock also recall underrated Saddle Creek outfits The Elected and Rilo Kiley. It's a trick carried from earlier in the album, as the sunny rhythms and harmonised jangle of "Hang From The Lights" prove. Later still, the pedal-steel and acoustic strumming of "Letting In The Light" reprise the sound once more, coming seemingly sprinkled with the same magic dust as newcomers Cults on their impeccable debut single "Go Outside".
The Sleep Tape doesn't stop there, jumping just an alt-country bandwagon now long since disappeared into the sunset. The reverbed guitar edge which loiters in "Hang From The Lights" lends the track the slightest of sedentary shoegaze notes - a blissful wash woven into its enviable melody. The title track itself is shoegaze-ier still, full of warm drone, vocal reverb and a decidedly Black Rebel Motorcycle Club bass-line (presumably thanks to sharing a producer in Rik Simpson). It's a sound worth repeating, and the slow, rocking plod of " A Future Ending" runs with it. Tempering the track with boy-girl vocals, it comes happily to rest in Black Angels-like psych-rock and light drone.
Though, just as sleep on a warm evening can prove hit and miss, so does "New Lovers". Rising and falling on fuzzy organ, it's thankfully short and unnecessary. Also paling in comparison is "Honeycomb". Wading in chilled out instrumental indulgence, it's neither as Sigur Rós as intended, nor is it fit for dinner party muzak.
These mistreads aside, The High Wire have made giant steps since the relative anonymity of Ahead Of The Rain. They've created an identity, albeit taken from others, and inhabiting a space between sleep and dream they more than make it their own.
(7/10)
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