so.. you want to know the story on this sleeper mix huh?

as some of you know i spent my longest years in the mid-west. i actually grew up in missouri. i left there about 5 years ago in the pursuit of anything better. while i was still there shortly before i left i got a tattoo in lawrence kansas of an iconic christ an my forearm, this was shortly followed up by a devil and a virgin mary but that's another story altogether. as i was browsing around the amazing commercial vehicle that is myspace i stumbled across sleeper's page. ( http://www.myspace.com/madawkward ) sleeper is from lawrence kansas.

drifting out of my speakers came this crazy lo-fi soundscape with an opening sample saying that the drum machine was one of the worst inventions of the 20th century. so i listened. then i came back later and listened some more. then i actually took a look at what this guy was up to. he has been modifying the circuitry of old keyboards ( casio, yamaha ) to force them to loop, glitch, even slow themselves down. if you don't think that's completely off the hook then stop reading.

back in the day i had this massive collection of garage sale 8-track stereo with aux in's. i would chain them all together to create layers of distortion and then build loops manually using shoplifted mini cassette recorders. his sound really took me back. so i thought what the hell i would love to have a set like this on insectmind.com. this was before insectmind looked good. it had style but it was poorly designed and more or less amature hour all the way. a lot has happened since then and i think the site is looking dope these days. anyway a set arrived from sleeper via ftp shortly after.

as i listened to the lo-fi loops churn thier way out of my cerwin vegas i found myself having trouble categorizing the sound. it obviously has strong hip-hop roots, but it goes past hip hop and digs deeper into a lo-fi soundscape pulling ambience and glitch into a smooth flowing collaboration of beats and sounds.

so at a loss for where to really put this set i created a new category called glitch.hop.

the world needs more artists willing to break-out like sleeper and iD. i hope to see more from them soon. do yourself a favor and check out [[ http://www.ransomnotesrecords.com ]] aside from the fact that the site is really dope you can get to know sleeper and iD a little better.

-trv