pieter nooten / michael brook - sleeps with the fishes

Sleeps With The Fishes is a moody, haunting, mainly instrumental album with a number of tracks containing equally moody haunted vocals. Swamped with gorgeous string arrangements, melancholy synths and highly atmospheric infinite guitar it is hard not to think of the album as entirely one piece, rather a set of separate tracks. 

 

Dutch musician Pieter Nooten began work on this record in early 1987. His band, Xymox, had formed in 1983 in Nijmegen in the Netherlands and was signed to 4AD records following some early support slots with rising 4AD stars Dead Can Dance. 1985 saw the release of the self titled debut album under the slightly expanded name Clan Of Xymox. The following year’s Medusa received unexpected praise and Xymox were fast becoming one of 4AD’s most talked about acts. But Nooten was tiring of the dark, overly gothic overtones and in early 1987 decided to quit the band. He continued to record and would regularly send fragments and home demos to 4AD supremo, Ivo Watts-Russell. Ivo was intrigued and granted permission for a full Nooten solo album. However Ivo had also decided that the demos needed something extra, and for this Ivo turned to Michael Brook, who’s 1986 debut album Hybrid had hugely impressed Ivo with it's ambient soundscapes. 

 

Brook had spent some years working with fellow Canadian Daniel Lanois and cerebral ambient pioneer Brian Eno. In 1985 Brook was heavily involved in the construction and sound design of Eno’s landmark 61-minute ambient piece “Thursday Afternoon” and Brook’s own Hybrid was the result of various sessions with Eno and Lanois throughout 1985 and 1986. The imaginatively swampy percussive beds of Hybrid were bolstered by many layers of delicate electric guitar. Brook had pioneered a method of sustaining an electric guitar note infinitely by taking the signal from a standard guitar pickup, amplifying it, and feeding it back into a separate pickup coil. The resulting continuously sustained note could then be manipulated to create whole new sounds. Daniel Lanois loved this set up and so Brook created one for him. Lanois’ infinite guitar was also coveted by The Edge during the sessions for The Joshua Tree and Brook created another one for the U2 guitarist (the beautiful results can be heard on “With Or Without You” amongst other songs.) 

 

Ivo figured that Brook’s mastery of the studio, and ability to create melancholy and mysterious soundscapes would complement Nooten’s fragmentary songs and music. Brook originally signed up purely as the producer but his involvement became such that Ivo suggested a joint credit. Although Nooten basically composed all the tunes, the overall shape and sound of the finished record would never have been arrived at without Brook’s considerable input. 

 

One the album's many strengths is the hazy sound that envelops the album. Brook's gently splashing percussion and murky glimmers of infinite guitar combine with gently buzzing washes of DX7 (borrowed from Brian Eno). Nooten's vocals are just as indistinct, and sometimes the only instruments to peak out of the fog are the occasional oboe and some mournful cellos. It's gorgeous. Eno once said that nearly every song in the world could be improved with the addition of backing vocals - to that I would add that most songs could also be improved with the addition of an oboe.

 

Most of the music on this record derived from Nooten's demos, but the duo also decided to re-record a couple of Xymox tracks. “Equal Ways” had originally featured on 1985’s Clan Of Xymox track and “After The Call” was reworked from the 1986 Medusa album. 

 

Although only about half the album is wordless, Sleeps With The Fishes always strikes me as an instrumental record, as it’s the music which really speaks, via the haunting strings, the eerie, wraithlike guitar, and the layers of synths that give the whole album a pleasing consistency. There's a wintery, frosty quality to much of the record, not unlike the The Pearl or the Plateaux Of Mirror where Harold Budd's piano is half lost in Brian Eno's chilly mist, music only partially heard on a foggy, chilled winter's morning. There's a truly ghostly quality to Sleeps With The Fishes, indistinct, hazy music from another place altogether.

 

The vocals are frequently low in the mix, mumbled and hushed, yet oddly the album doesn’t sound depressing or oppressive. Melancholy, reflective, sometimes sad and almost tearful, but it’s not miserable in the slightest and one of very few albums that manages to maintain the same quality throughout. And that’s a quality not only of the music itself, but the mood throughout - sad, beautiful, resplendent, and deeply affecting. The listener is completely drawn into the soundworld, and even after the album has finished its spine-tingling qualities remain. At times it veers close to Goth, but cleverly contains none of that genre’s bombast or melodrama, being quietly understated. The sleeve is similarly quiet and unassuming, lacking in all but the basic credits, black and with an obscure shape/design rather than the usual lush 4AD style cover. This is an album that refuses to announce its presence; rather it prefers to hide in a dark and cobwebbed corner and waits to be discovered. This dusty corner, (think of Miss Havisham's house, all pale drapes and ageing lace), might also contain the second This Mortal Coil album, Filigree And Shadow, which had been issued by 4AD just a year earlier, and which shares with Sleeps With The Fishes a great many traits. The TMC link would be cemented a few years later when “Several Times” was expanded into a full song by Nooten for the third This Mortal Coil album Blood.  There, the sonerous tones of Deirdre Rutkowski, accompanied by Gini Ball’s heartbreaking violin and Nooten himself on keyboards, give the song it’s final shape. And it’s breathtaking.

 

This album is a terribly intimate experience. It works beautifully when you are alone, deep into the night and the rest of the world is asleep. There is real beauty to be found here, it's very precious, and to be cherished.