A guitar-driven ambient enthrallment compels across No Solace in Sleep, the influential debut album from Aarktica, the alias of Jon DeRosa. Originally released in 2000, No Solace in Sleep was remastered this year, providing a strong reason to check out this gripping album on its 25th anniversary, regardless of whether you’re a first-time listener or simply revisiting this gem of a release, whose sounds derive solely from guitar and pedals. “In 1998, I went deaf in my right ear. That’s how it started,” DeRosa says of the album’s creative experience. “The intention was to translate this new version of sound I was experiencing into something I could make sense of.”
“Glacia” opens the album with a meditative sense of tranquility — expanding with droning resonance as swells of guitar tones resemble smoke rising gently from water. Also the album’s lengthiest track, “Glacia” proves masterful in tactfully unveiling its grippingly spacious soundscape. The ensuing “Indie” embraces more familiar guitar tones with plucky intrigue developing into a wintry effervescence past the three-minute mark, while a thumping rhythmic warmness weaves in seamlessly. “Elena” continues that sense of comforting tranquility, continuing the more sunshine-set adorations of “Indie” compared to the wintry unraveling within “Glacia.”
Elsewhere, “Inebria” feels like an ominous, ghostly procession with its whirring, wind-like chills, while “The Ice (Feels Three Feet Thick Between Us)” casts a more illuminated spell in its glimmering character. An element lingers in the background alongside that resembles a wordless vocal entrancement. Then there’s “Welcome Home,” captivating in its melodic guitar work — less vague and filter-heavy than the others preceding it, and in turn resembling a subdued post-rock slice of nostalgia. No Solace in Sleep is a fully enveloping listening experience from Aarktica.
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The track is also featured in the genre-based, best-of Spotify compilation Emerging Indie Rock.
We discovered this release via MusoSoup.
