Robert Wyatt
Shleep

Every time I approach the music of this album, I often find myself caught in a sensation of wakeful sleep, as if I were living a "quiet nightmare". And it is precisely with this oxymoron that I allow myself to begin to describe the atmospheres of an album that comes late in Wyatt's career (1997), but in these cases, it's also true that better late than never. Because even though it is distant in time from his more acclaimed performances (with Soft Machine, the personal project Matching Mole, and then the solo albums: "The End of an Ear," "Rock Bottom," "Ruth is Stranger than Richard," all highly recommended), Shleep is a special, fascinating, mature album, in my opinion his best along with Rock Bottom, even though it has an undeniably lesser historical importance.

There is a sort of personal program behind this work, and it is to musically represent, through the poetry of his voice, the nightly nightmares that in the previous two years had often taken away the sleep from the British artist's nights (a kind of ailment, perhaps a legacy of his excessive use of psychedelic drugs in the past). Hence the need to forge the new word shleep, which synthesizes this character of disturbed insomnia, phonetic, similar to the English sleep, but with a different pronunciation. Many of the songs that follow on the album are subtle parables, almost themed improvisations, that seem like they will never end, but provide reference points in the timbre of the instruments, rather than in an extended structure where bridges, verses, or choruses are indistinguishable. It is indeed the timbre that is Wyatt's research point in this album, each song is unique as it is dominated by strong and often warm timbres that distinguish it uniquely. This is how it happens in the opening "Heaps of Sheeps" (the one that most closely resembles the song form on the album perhaps), where the characteristic is a sound influenced by Brian Eno (who is indeed present in the piece, playing the synths), between finely modulated keyboards and a driving guitar rhythmic matrix. Elsewhere it is Annie Whitehead's deep trombone that determines the piece's sound along with that sacred liturgy voice Wyatt uses both in high and low tones, often intertwining them in multiple vocal tracks.

The gem called "Maryan" (written together with guitarist Philip Catherine) is instead marked by the timbre of the violin, which hovers above an intimate ballad that releases pure poetry in the melody of the voice, carried by a continuous yet calm acoustic guitar arpeggio and the soft rhythm of the double bass. For me, one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, it reminds me of the movement and scent of the sea (also due to the lyrics). Beside the quiet life veiled in melancholy of pieces like this or "Free will and testament", there are more nervous interventions in the harmonies, with dissonances ("The duchess", a nursery rhyme disturbed by uncontrolled dissonances of free jazz origin), or uncertain rhythms, where "the wakeful sleep" becomes more disconnected and disturbing, as in "Was a friend", written together with loyal bassist Hugh Hopper, in "September the ninth" or in "Alien", in whose dark lyrics more distant voices clash, and whose text is significant (here are the first two verses):

I sleep on the wing
Above the rainclouds
Blown by the wind (no roots on earth)
No ground below (no ground below)
Just ruins (timeless)
Dandelion clocks (drifting)
Am I from Venus? (higher, higher)

No ocean bed, no west-wind drift
No desert sand, land or sea
No world below, blown by the wind (limbless) (homeless)
Not human
Lost in longing (lost in longing)
Never belonging (never belonging)
Am I from Venus? (higher, higher, higher)

Wyatt's peculiarity is to use diverse types of instruments and sounds (with a particular preference for trumpets and trombones and jazz sounds) with unparalleled skill and awareness, an authentic composer outside of any genre and unique classification, committed to giving a particular meaning to each instrument, a significance to each timbre (even in the use of percussion). And in the same way, he uses the (excellent) musicians surrounding him, using their personality to complete the song. And that is why while on a song like "Maryan", there is Philip Catherine, on a piece with a completely different meaning such as "Alien", we find Phil Manzanera on guitar (who made his studios available to record the album), with his saturated and allusive electric guitar. What does not create discontinuity among all these different sounds is precisely Wyatt's compositional style, recognizable, that kind of Joyce's "stream of consciousness" applied to music, a continual reflection on the dream and its meaning, searching for solitude (and here I also want to emphasize the consistency between the music and the author's own life, eternally silent and secluded) that suggests tranquility rather than disturbance. And in the end, "Shleep" seems to lean more toward the former, if it weren't for the ending "The whole point of no return" that comes surprisingly short and dark after the almost rap-blues humor of "Blues in Bob Minor", to conclude (or perhaps to leave without a true end) a timeless album (really, the date it was made does not influence anything, not even the sound) that with each listen reveals a new part of itself, leaving the rest ever in shadow.