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The Sleeping Cliffs
Decomposition
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of this EP from The Sleeping Cliffs, the absolutely stunning post-rock solo project of Virginia-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, and all around virtuoso Todd Glidewell.
The catalog Glidewell has built in only three years is mind-boggling. There seems to be no end in sight, either, as Decomposition represents a gorgeous and expansive new document, both of Glidewell’s seemingly limitless talents and the artistic flexibility that his nom de plume offers.
This 5-song EP comes in at just under 14 minutes, and despite its digestible run-time it feels like it has the scope of a Russian novel.
“Ox Bone” at the top of the track list is a perfect welcome to the uninitiated. It displays brilliantly the particularity of The Sleeping Cliffs - as someone once remarked (apologies, my mind has lost the reference) - these songs use the drums in a way that’s almost melodic, while the instrumentation is relentlessly percussive.
It’s always a little tricky trying to tease out the artist’s intention and meaning when dealing with pure instrumentals, but I’ll give it a shot nonetheless. It’s tempting to reach for contemporary headlines and say that Decomposition references some aspect of our decaying reality.
Indeed, there are moments where it feels like there may be some degree of that in play - the bleak landscape evoked in “Somnia” or the grumbling, plodding, and aptly-named “Despondent”. But I feel like that’s not the real story here, and it probably would sell this remarkable piece of work far too short.
So much of what The Sleeping Cliffs does serves as a meditation on the act of composition itself, the lack of lyrics diverting your attention more carefully to the decisions Glidewell is making, the roads not taken, the art of arrangement, the rise and fall of various elements in the mix.
Witness the way “Ox Bone” offers you a tour through the musical phrases that form its backbone, and then immediately starts deconstructing them. The second time the theme comes around, it’s sliced up and passed around from one instrument to the next, the bass completing a phrase that started on the keys, and so on. You’ll hear this sort of game throughout the EP, in various iterations. To my mind, at least, this is the real Decomposition at play.
“Somnia” is awfully lush for something so short and bleak, feeling like the inertia that holds us in bed on the rare occasion when there’s nothing particularly pressing waiting on the other side of the door, the desire to sink into the sheets but with the nagging awareness that it can’t go on forever.
“Nesh” flips the script and bursts out of the gate sounding like the onset of the climactic quest in some classic, epic video game. A riptide of frenetic synth tosses us over the top of the merciless groove until a hydra of guitars steps in to divvy up the arrangement and build toward a breathless crescendo. I can’t imagine what it feels like, living inside of a mind that has this many synapses firing at the same time, but I suspect it’s a good thing that mind can play a roomful of different instruments.
“Despondent” is true to its name, and feels particularly pertinent to the idea of decomposition as well, with a soft balladic skeleton, the most beautiful passage on the record around the 1:10 mark, a mournful and evocative movement throughout - but also a segment that features gnarly, choppy guitars that almost seem to be phasing in from a parallel dimension where this was a much different song. I found myself musing about how often my own despondency is indelibly mixed together with my anxieties.
It all finishes up with “Bluff” - one of the wickedest, most cinematic, most insidious-sounding tracks in The Sleeping Cliffs’ catalog. The drums are tasteful and devious, the bass line saunters through the track like a seductive demon looking for a mark, the arrangement is sumptuous as it summons all sorts of images from the subconscious. And it all wraps up with a deliciously menacing guitar solo.
You won’t find many offerings in the world of instrumental music that are as sonically overpowering, as intellectually stimulating, as demanding of proper attention paid, as The Sleeping Cliffs. And Decomposition is among the best work they’ve ever published.
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