SLEEP: Tranquility Base by Max Richter | Album Review
The human voice has always had a prominent place in Max Richter’s work. Be it on his 2002 album Memoryhouse or on his late works All Human Beings — International Voices and Voices (Pt. 1 & 2), which are definitely brought to their peak in terms of aesthetic execution. Grace Davidson has long played a central role as a recurring voice. For instance, she was already present on the album Memoryhouse, in the track Arbenita (11 Years). With a distinctive style that was already clearly recognizable at the time, Max Richter managed to perfectly coordinate the violin and Davidson’s voice, so that a feeling of suspension between real-time and differential-time (cf. Baudrillard 2013, 5) is virtually established.
According to Baudrillard, the reality we experience is always already a delay that can only be resolved in sleep, in death, as well as in unconsciousness (cf. Baudrillard 2013, 5). And indeed, the album SLEEP: Tranquility Base enables precisely this phenomenon again; it enables a different perception of time. Whether it is a representation of real-time or much more aligns our perception of time with the slow, yet constant rhythm of the music and the vibrato of Davidson’s voice.
Even though the album is by no means a new composition — just about all the elements are present, for example, in the song Richter: Path 5 (delta) — the open, thinned-out arrangement gives the melody and, above all, the humanity of the voice even more room to breathe. A sense of closeness inevitably sets in as the individual frequencies are given the space they need to fully unfold. In fact, the entire album feels like a counter-movement to today’s often derogatorily labeled “Epic Trailer Music.” The reduction of elements to the bare minimum confronts us with ourselves. Never at any point is the music able to drown out our thoughts or devour them into the incomprehensible.
Unfortunately, however, the album ultimately lacks new ideas. Only towards the end, the impression of having heard everything before changes. It is a curse and a blessing at the same time to have such a distinct own style as Max Richter does. On the one hand, his music has always had a high recognition value, as is only reserved for the greatest artists. On the other hand, nothing truly new emerges, every melody sounds as if it had already appeared on the last album. Yes, even if you recognize Max Richter’s style immediately, it’s still hard to recognize a special album. It almost seems as if his own formal language, is replacing that of his albums. As if a style of one’s own always implies a repetition of that very style. Considering the current developments around artificial intelligence, a deeply human testimony of our time.
Literature:
Baudrillard, Jean (2013). Das radikale Denken. Berlin [Orig. Paris, 1995].
