reviews

, the ticket, 12 january 2007
Thread pulls
Fluorescent 1/2/3 9-pt Records ***

Dublin band Thread Pulls don't do things by halves - these three simultaneous releases are in limited
editions of 100 copies, and come with individual (and quite rudimentary) artwork by artist Garrett Phelan. Collectors of individualistic music, therefore, will have a field day, while fans of music that is neither
soft nor safe also may find something to treasure here. The musical blueprint appears very much in tune
with the likes of This Heat, The Fall and various Krautrock acts; sounds jumble one into the other, melodies drift, tunes meander, vocals enter and then exit. It might sound like drab experimentation, idiosyncrasy
for its own sake, but repeated listenings provide glinting, glancing pleasures. The releases are
on sale at Thread Pulls (rare) live gigs and from their website. www.9-pt.com Tony Clayton-Lea

liabilitywebzine.com
Hard Sleeper
Rain/A Leaf Spiral
[Sub Rosa::2004]

Le premier disque de Peter Maybury est aussi obscur que la signification que l’on peut essayer de donner à sa pochette. Au moins il donne tout de suite le ton. Celui-ci sera minimal ou ne sera pas. Adepte du latpop, Peter Maybury s’est débarrassé d’une production électronique qui aurait pu être trop encombrante et se contente du strict nécessaire. Lui qui qualifie sa musique de « détritus de pop » est peut-être un peu sévère avec lui-même. Ou alors trop modeste. On parlera un peu plus de scories. L’Irlandais épure au maximum ses mélodies pour ne laisser que des miettes mélodiques. C’est ce qui donne sans doute ce sentiment de lenteur, d’apathie généralisé mais qui donnent ce caractère un peu abstrait et hors du temps. C’est donc dans une forme d’avant-garde que se complait Maybury. Entre modernisme et continuation d’une certaine idée de la musique électronique notre homme développe un univers brumeux et à la limite de la mélancolie.

Comme chacun a pu le comprendre ce disque se décompose en deux entités bien distinctes. D’abord une pièce – Rain – de plus plus de vingt-trois minutes qui mêle petites mélodies au piano, petites distorsions électroniques, percussions légères et ambiances contemplatives. De l’autre côté A Leaf Spiral divisé en quatre parties et qui donne la part belle au minimalisme électronique et aux expérimentations sonores. Dans l’ensemble on ressort plutôt satisfait de ce disque qui s’écoute à la tombée de la nuit. Il n’y aura certes pas de bouleversements majeurs grâce à Peter Maybury mais celui-ci remplit avec efficacité son office. De cette musique technologique aux aspects de musique concrète on retient cette idée, pas forcément saugrenue, que les artistes comme lui ont encore un vaste avenir et que les perspectives de création sont encore larges. Et si c’est du niveau de ce Rain / A Leaf Spiral on ne pourra qu’être confiant en l’avenir. On peut toujours rêver. par Fabien, chronique publiée le 15-04-2005

the wire, issue 252, february 2005
Hardsleeper "Rain"/A Leaf Spiral
This first longplayer for Sub Rosa by Dublin-based Hard Sleeper, aka Peter Maybury, sounds at times more like a group effort than the product of a lone individual. Accompanied by electronic snuffles and hollow tubular sounds, a piano multiplies, each iteration of the instrument playing small repetitive figures in its own sonic space. The music ebbs and flows as the pianos mark out melancholy rhythms until unexpectedly stopping short. In their place a market garden’s worth of electronic flora blossoms, in whose synthetic borders can be heard brief echoes of Herbie Hancock’s 1973 masterpiece Rain Dance. Later passages bleed successively into each other, percussive stabs piercing blocks of electronic noise, lambent bass hanging pendulously inside the music’s structure. Hard Sleeper’s titular references to nature underline a sense that this soundworld, although predominantly electronic, maintains a relationship with the living world. The music appears to be both constructed and performed without, however, making clear its precise methodology (the hard-edged vector design of the cd cover gives nothing away). The mystery of the interaction keeps this listener fascinated throughout. Combined with a rapt attention to the quality and placement of each sound, Hard Sleeper’s music is refreshingly unfamiliar, as though deliberately, but unselfconsciously resisting the rut of the known. The music’s development is leisurely and unpredictable, and the vast majority of the piece’s 23 minute duration can be experienced as a confident journey in an unfamiliar territory. Only at its conclusion is “Rain”’s strangeness marred somewhat by a resolution that is achieved a little too easily. The rest of the disc consists of A Leaf Spiral, a four part composition which proves as rich and spacious as its predecessor. In the first section electronic cicadas shadow the patter of radioactive rain, while in a later part, rhythmic elements are heard like hesitant clockwork felt on the skin. Here is sound, tactile and dynamic enough to make one’s ears smile. colin buttimer

the wire, issue 252, february 2005
Thread Pulls, Summer Songs
Ninepoint Records (9.1) CD
The slow angular spiked guitar trudge of Dublin young pups and three piece Thread Pulls is built from feedback, dissonant chops and reedy vocals that put one in mind of Thurston Moore traversing a tar pit, laborious foot lift by laborious foot lift, guitar dripping black oily tendrils and bitumen clots, like a heathen god risen from a forbidden land: a Subsonic Youth in every sense. This debut mini album collects five tracks and is an admirable declaration of intent. Opener “Summer” builds over a riff churning like an idling diesel engine, high guitar chimes ushering in the buzzing tectonic bass and drum part led by pinpoint cymbals, before the vocal arrives. This modus operandi works to particularly fine effect on the somnambulant sludge riffed “Nearly There” and the disenchanted stop-start squalls of final instrumental track “Building”. nick southgate

Trax magazine
Hardsleeper Rain/A Leaf Spiral (Sub Rosa/Nocturne)
Quelle joie d'entendre un disque électronica qui s'éloigne des sentiers battus ! Car depuis quelque temps déjà, ce genre censé incarner le versant avant-gardiste de la vague techno, est devenu trop prévisible, à force de
ressasser les mêmes effets et logiciels. Pièce maîtresse de cet album signé de l'Irlandais Peter Maybury (par ailleurs graphiste réputé), un titre magistral de 23 minutes, "Rain", qui emporte l'auditeur dans une passionnante ballade sonore. Une mélodie au piano, soutenue par quelques beaux et discrets bricolages numériques, se voit peu à peu emportée au loin, dans un vaste dédale d'émotions, des plus brutes aux plus chaleureuses. Les autres pièces, qui forment les quatre chapitres de "A Leaf Spiral", ne possèdent pas tout à fait la même qualité, mais parviennent assez bien à conjuguer sons naturels épars, digressions artificielles et fragments de mélodies. Les connaisseurs pourront comparer ces derniers titres aux productions du label 12K. Les autres, plus simplement curieux, apprécieront l'ensemble comme on se met à l'écoute d'un paysage, les yeux fermés et l'ouïe à la dérive.
Jean-Yves Leloup

Trax magazine
Hardsleeper Rain/A Leaf Spiral (Sub Rosa/Nocturne)
What a joy listening to an electronic record which keeps away from the well worn paths.
Because for now a little while, this genre - electronica - which is supposed to embody the avant-gardiste side of the techno wave, has became too predictable, by repeating the same effects and softwares. The main piece on this record by the Irish Peter Maybury ( also a famous graphic designer ), "Rain", a masterly title of 23 minutes long, carries the listener away in a fascinating sonic journey. A piano melody, elevated by beautiful and quiet digital elements, is gradually carried away, in a vast maze of emotions, from the harshest to the warmest. The other parts which complete the four chapters of A Leaf Spiral, don't exactly have the same quality but manage quite successfully to combine natural scattered sounds, artificial digressions and fragments of melodies. The connoisseurs will be able to compare these last pieces to the 12K labels productions. Others, simply curious, will appreciate the whole in the way one sets oneself to listen to a landscape, eyes shut and the hearing drifting.
Jean-Yves Leloup

trip-hop.net
Si vous avez un besoin croissant de vous détendre, si vous êtes angoissés par l'agitation urbaine, que vos poumons ont besoin d'évacuer le surplus de dioxyde de carbone et que la musique est pour vous la seule médecine susceptible de vous relaxer, alors "rain" et "a leaf spiral" d'Hard Sleeper a.k.a Peter Maybury sont les antalgiques qui vous conviendront parfaitement. Mon conseil : s'étendre sur son lit, fermer les yeux, se concentrer sur sa respiration et imaginer un ciel de rêve sous un doux paysage de neige. Cet opus glacé "détritus de la pop" comme le souligne son créateur, est basé sur la rencontre des instruments acoustiques (tels que le piano, la batterie et la guitare) et des machines électroniques. L'ensemble est d'une
qualité sonore rare. Vous pouvez donc l'écouter aussi fort que vous le souhaitez. Cet album rappelle incontestablement l'univers minimaliste de Biosphère. Attention : les premiers effets de "rain" se font ressentir à partir de la 10è minute.

longuerdondes.com
HARD SLEEPER
Rain / A leaf spiral (Sub Rosa / Nocturne)
Dans sa prose musicale, Hard Sleeper trace un trait d'union entre organique et analogique, confondant les rôles de l'humain et de sa machine. Dans une première pièce de 23 mn ("Rain"), il achemine l'auditeur vers un univers à la fois familier et angoissant, basé sur une rythmique sourde et linéaire suggérant les battements d'un cœur, stimulé par des interférences artificielles, croisement entre la fréquence d'un encéphalogramme et le chant crépusculaire des insectes... En retrait, des nappes d'orgue et de piano apaisent la tourmente, car bien que minimaliste et minutieusement épurée, cette musique n'en est pas moins absorbante, voire étouffante de par ses atours essentiels et sa progression exagérément lente. A s'administrer égoïstement.
Le 25/11/2004 par Cédric Manusset

autresdirections.net
hard sleeper / "rain" / a leaf spiral [sub rosa/nocturne]
mardi 23 novembre 2004.

Pianos et bursts électroniques sont les mamelles de "Rain" / A Leaf Spiral. Mais pour autant, la musique de Hard Sleeper, pseudonyme cachant l’identité de Peter Maybury, n’a rien à voir avec l’album de Mitchell Akiyama sorti il y a peu sur le même label, le belge Sub Rosa. Chez le dublinois Hard Sleeper, le piano offre de belles mélodies répétitives, parfois superposées, dont le ton est méditatif ou plus grave. Autour de ce piano, on retrouve de la friture numérique et quelques nappes. Cette mise en forme peut rester discrète ou tirer la couverture à elle : au cœur de "Rain" apparaissent sirènes et fantômes, puis une pulsation marquée, saturée, et des sons grinçants, qui contrastent avec l’apaisement du début. L’hymne revient finalement, éprouvé, presque au terme de 20 minutes, et cette fois il semble plus fébrile, donc plus précieux encore.
Le quadryptique A Leaf Spiral débute comme un écho laptopien onirique. Lézards et insectes électroniques vivent doucement sous de hautes herbes qui bougent au soleil. Puis dans une seconde partie, le tableau prend une couleur plus inquiétante, avec un son grave et sourd. Le troisième mouvement, fait de constantes variations, est plus éthéré ; le dernier, enfin, décline un thème de la troisième en y ajoutant l’épaisseur de tons invariants. Ce A Leaf Spiral rêveur renvoie directement aux productions du label 12K ou Raster-Noton.

brainwashed.com 10.04
hard sleeper.: "rain"/a leaf spiral
"moments of unattenuated beauty"

filter 09.04
MICROBE_HUNTING (New records of note from the fringe)::
Far crisper, ”Rain”/A Leaf Spiral (Sub Rosa) from Dublin’s Hard Sleeper (aka Peter Maybury) crosses stray frequencies into drifting tonal clusters. Maybury subtracts the beat and creates an expanse of telefax shuffles from laptop pips and fizz.

textura.org 09.04
Hard Sleeper.: "Rain"/A Leaf Spiral
Sub Rosa
For someone with such an acclaimed background in design and typography, Dublin-based Peter Maybury's latest Hard Sleeper. release “Rain”/A Leaf Spiral boasts a rather undistinguished, even crude cover design. Luckily for the listener, its minimal electronic music is the diametric opposite. Like his recent fällt EP Land, Live@ Rausch, “Rain”/A Leaf Spiral exudes a clean and clinical sheen and, in spite of its sonic tactility, is meditative, unhurried, and quiet, making it an almost quintessential 12k or Line recording.
At twenty-three minutes, the title track is the obvious epic, although that's attributable more to duration than dynamics. It might seem somewhat loosely structured, but in fact Maybury carefully modulates its development throughout. He places a wavering tone in the background that forms a connecting thread for the numerous episodes, and frames the piece with an elegant piano intro that returns as a closing refrain to bring the piece to a gentle resolution. A rich arsenal of digital noise—what Maybury calls “the detritus of pop”—appears, but the various surges and buzzes emerge restrainedly to not disrupt the track's serene surface. Not only does the persistent wavering tone recall Raster-Noton, but in one section clicks, snaps, and pops coalesce into an unmistakably Komet-like rhythm. As the composition nears its end, Maybury merges firecracker pops with soft bass pounds and percussive accents to marvelously understated effect. Using digitally manipulated sounds of piano, percussion, synthesizers, and guitars, the titular piece impresses as a dreamy travelogue. He splits “A Leaf Spiral” into four sections of which the middle two notably stand out. In part two, he cleverly uses drop-outs from a cloud of hiss to generate a subtle funk pattern, and in the third section, deftly constructs an extremely minimal piece using tears, clicks, burbles, and bleeps.
All things considered, it's an engaging enough release but there is a down side: “Rain”/A Leaf Spiral doesn't sound a whole lot different from works previously released on 12k or Line. What saves it from being merely derivative, however, is the intelligence and imagination Maybury brings to the material. While it's not revolutionary, it's inarguably accomplished.

absorb.org
hard sleeper: land, live @ rausch (fallt)
the first thing one notices about fallt releases is the distinctive design aesthetic that distinguishes them, so not surprisingly two recent eps, komet's arc, live @ swr freiburg and hard sleeper's 'land, live@ rausch', are worth the purchase for the packaging alone. both come in scallop-shelled transparent cases (familiar to those who fetishized the twelve releases in the raster-noton's 20 ' to 2000 series) and are printed to appear double-sided. the music, however, is our primary concern here. in that regard, dublin-based peter maybury (aka hard sleeper) brings a similar concern for detail to his almost twenty-eight minute piece as he does to his design and typographic work. it's a subdued and subtle work, placid and unassuming, whose quietude deceptively camouflages its rich detail. minimal streams of clicks and pulses flow throughout overlaid by ghostly piano figures and warm, shimmering organ-like tones. rather than repeatedly voicing a singular theme, maybury nurtures an amoebic evolution through overlapping sections where fragmentary wisps of melody surface throughout. strangely, the piece concludes with some loud last-minute drumming that's out of character with the restraint that's otherwise exercised so delicately. in short, 'land, live @ rausch' is a nuanced electronic work that'll appeal strongly to raster-noton and 12k fans.
ron schepper

paris transatlantic magazine 04.04
Hard Sleeper
LAND, LIVE @RAUSCH
AB-CD F.0018.0004
Hard Sleeper, aka Peter Maybury, hails from Dublin, where Land was recorded in concert at a performing space called Rausch. Once more, those familiar with the labels 12k, LINE, Mille Plateaux and Raster Noton won't be surprised by the surface of Maybury's music; polished, discreet in volume, harmonically conservative (unashamedly diatonic), leisurely in pace and gently pockmarked with clicks'n'cuts that often imply rather than embody a sense of pulse, it looks back almost nostalgically to the sleek pattern work of 1970s mainstream minimalism, especially Reich (the pulses that fade in at 11'07"). Conceived as a kind of suite - track indexes could have been inserted at several places, notably at 14'45", to mark out the constituent "movements" - it's accessible and accomplished, if not exactly revolutionary. —Dan Warburton

grooves magazine 23.02.04 by John Gibson, Senior Editor
Hard Sleeper | Land, Live @ Rausch | 05.11.02 AB-CD | F.0018.0004
    
New Discoveries on Fallt
Maybe one of the reasons that 'space' is such an important quality in the music I love is that 
I've always linked the sounds I hear to geographical images. Someone out there might be able to 
psychoanalyse that, who knows. 
Anyway, today, February 23rd 2004, a cold wintry day in Newcastle upon Tyne under a big blue 
sky. Whilst I work away on my PhD I have been engaged in some headphone ilstening to two of 
the most beautifully realised records I've heard in ages, music so attuned to the genle frostiness 
outsid ethat they may as well    be an extension of that very environment. Both come courtesy 
of Northern Ireland's    Fallt, a brilliant, under-exposed label that is as much about the visual 
production of its releases as artistic artefacts as the music. 
The discs in question are, firstly, Komet's "Arc, Live", a recording of a gig in 2000. Frank 
Bretschneider (for it is he) originally turned me off big style. I thought his bleeping minimalism 
was about as interesting as a vinyl    test tone. Now, though, I've well warmed to it, and this 
subtle, almost-invisible funk music is like tiny icicles forming at the far edge of a tree branch. 
Delicat though it is, at high volumes one imagines Bretschneider would shake the very walls of the 
venue with reverb.
The real find, though, is a live set by Hard Sleeper (the project of Dubliner Peter Maybury), an 
artist of whom I knew absolutely nothing prior to listening. Maybury is a friend of Donnacha 
Costello's and there are similarities between their music. Neither is interested in mathematical 
abstraction, using minimal approaches instead to tour the more melancholic side of the psyche. 
However, whilst Costello has a tendency to go for the gut in his wrenching instrumentals of a 
love lost, Maybury constructs something altogether more ethereal and sublime from tiny fragments 
of melody of detritus. His music brings to mind Shuttle358, but at a point where the music almost 
hovers on the very edge of existence. Tiny pops and crackles start to emerge from a bed of poignant 
tones in their very twilight, there-but-not-there, spectral apparitions of song. At the 11-minute
mark a more profound melodic line starts to emerge, adding weight to, but never disrupting, the 
carefully crafted sense of serene stillness that characterises this exceptional release.
Always great to come across someone unfamiliar and to fall in love with their music there and then. 
Particularly when the low sunbeams shining through the blind in the room seem utterly at one with 
the sounds in one's ears. After retreating back into near-silence, the piece comes alive again 
towards the end.
These are limited to 500 copies so you'd best move fast.
John Gibson

igloo magazine
Hard Sleeper | Land, Live @ Rausch
[ Fallt, CD ]
4/5
Dublin's sound composer/designer Peter Maybury is Hard Sleeper (Sub Rosa, Static Caravan). 
The single-track performance is cast adrift in particle subtones, thawing the winter freeze. 
In what could be the soundtrack to an elusive underworld, Hard Sleeper takes to a new 'Land' - 
one mirroring our earthly thumbprint, but teetering along its fine lines, curves and loops.
The uninterrupted bass beat sets the coordinates for layers of thinly laced ambient rhythms, 
faint as can be. By extending some keynotes, Maybury is able to compose a carefree passage 
that glides and hums over what seems like an endless base of prolonged reverb. These grains 
of sound make a composite sketch of an emerging artist.
TJ Norris

irish times 16.10.03
DEAF 2003 compilation
[ deaf recordings ]
... a lot of the wow factor is provided by the newer names at this party; the lovely splinters of
Pete Maybury's 'slowbeat pt. 2'... the shivering soul of former Decal man Dennis McNulty's 'Still Seams'...
Jim Carroll

www.cyclicdefrost.com 04.03
floating foundation vol II
[ sub rosa ]
... understated, slow moving, quiet with well timed and unexpected additions to mark the path.

www.forcedexposure.com 17.06.03
floating foundation vol II
[ sub rosa ]
... these five works emanate from the beginning a strong energy which develops step by step into
a deep and intelligent drone.

the irish times 10.01.01
HARD SLEEPER * * * *
Hard Sleeper
This debut outing from acclaimed Dublin graphic designer Peter Maybury is an engaging
slice of dark electronica, and one that straddles a nebulous boundary between minimalist techno and
American lo-fi. Maybury offers a spry twist on the ambient dance pioneered by Warp stalwarts
Boards of Canada. Repeated listens expose deeper ambitions, however. An accompanying booklet,
produced with Californian design magazine Emigre, confirms Maybury's post-rock leanings.
At a time when too much Irish music strives towards humourless 'authenticity', Hard Sleeper exhibits
a heartening zeal to push boundaries and challenge expectations.
Edward Power

the event guide 24.01.01 - 07.02.01
HARD SLEEPER
S/T [ Emigre ]
Hard Sleeper comes to you courtesy of Dublin graphic designer Peter Maybury and Californian
multimedia publishing house Emigre, and is the concluding part of that label's Dreaming Trilogy,
comprising a thirteen-track instrumental CD accompanied by a 72-page book of visual images.
There is an edgy paranoia to this music that veers from fractured ambient blasts to intense chaotic noise
Alleviated occasionally by guitar chords that sing when speaking, Maybury's intention seems to be
aural dislocation. Isolated parts jump out, come into focus and die away again.
Fragments of old analog synths, splashing Chinese cymbals and sinister bass noises function
as sonic landmarks on a rail journey across an unfamiliar landscape, destination unknown but fearsome.
The sound of what it might feel like to sleep on Saturn.
Lee Casey

hot press 14.03.01
HARD SLEEPER
'Hard Sleeper' [ Emigre ]
Let's be clear about one thing : Peter Maybury is one talented bastard. Not content with composing,
performing and engineering the entirety of this album, he's also seen fit to take care of design and
photography duties on the accompanying lusciously-produced 78-page book, and with the Emigre
seal of approval to boot. The abstraction of the packaging is no superficial distraction, mind you -
Maybury's experiments with form are applied with as much care to the core of the music as they are
to its container. It's all densely-tectured hedmusik for sure - but how does it fare against the other
(gulp) post-rockers on home turf?
In common with many of its more obvious reference points (Tortoise, Rothko, Third Eye Foundation,
even the bould Jim O'Rourke in one of his less melodic guises), 'Hard Sleeper' anchors most of its more
difficult wow and flutter to a solid, cyclical set of rhythms. When it's at its best, as on '88' or the
deliciously subdued 'Trash', this approach is extremely effective, by turns hypnotic and desperately
unsettling. A fine headfuck if that's what you're angling for, Hard Sleeper's brand of horizontal academia
will reward close listening.
James Kelleher