Sleeping at last

I’m really jealous of you guys, because I’m going to introduce you to someone truly special and I know I say it a lot, but this time, it’s a big deal okay? I’d gladly lose my memories of this band, just to get to fall in love with their music all over again. I said band though it’s not really the truth. Ok, let me just clear this out : Sleeping at last started out as a band in 1999. It consisted of 3 musicians back then : Ryan O’Neal, Chad O’Neal and Dan Perdue. They released 4 albums together, then two of the members left, and since about 2011, Ryan O’Neal was the only one left. He pursued to write new music under the name of the band, though it’s more of a musical solo project now.

Basically, Ryan is in charge of everything seeing that he’s also a multi-instrumentalist, though he very often collaborates with various musicians and instrumentalists. He’s not only self producing but also writing lyrics, composing and singing. Don’t ask me how he does it, because I’m wondering myself, but he seems to handle it quite well, I mean he’s been doing that for some time already and he’s releasing new stuff now and then, just like a regular band would do. However, now that I think about it, he’s rarely touring and having live concerts, so that must be the answer. Though I’m not complaining, quite the contrary! I’m amazed, always.

His creativity is just out of this world and is contagious as well. Listening to his music is like drinking a magical potion stimulating the right hemisphere. It also has a healing effect on me, so he’s the number one for me in that aspect as well. And don’t get me started on his song-writing skills, he’s equally putting as much effort into lyrics as into music itself, and the final effect very often  leaves me breathless, emotional and dazed.

Interesting fact : What’s also worth mentioning is that he’s making podcasts about the whole process behind his music, and I absolutely adore them. Before that he was also making long post about it on the official site (it’s easy to navigate and the aesthetics is so lovely) – just look for a tag How it was made to find his older posts. Not only they put some light on parts I wouldn’t normally pay attention to, but he’s explaining step by step his thought process, why he wrote it the way he did, how did he choose instruments for it, where did the general idea come from and many more. Here you can listen to it yourself through this link (just select one of the options).

Let me shortly describe you some of his big projects :

1. Yearbook – consists of 36 songs in total, which were released regularly throughout the span of a whole year, 3 songs per month.

2.Many Beautiful Things – an original motion picture soundtrack; it’s a documentary about the life and art of watercolorist, Lilias Trotter. Here’s the trailer : 

3.Atlas : Year One – that’s absolutely one of my favourite albums ever! It consists of 30 songs, but they are divided into 6 thematic EPs : Darkness, Light, Space I, Space II, Land & Oceans. If you ever wondered how the whole solar system may sound like, then here you go. 

4. Atlas : Year Two  – it’s an ongoing project, which is a sort of continuation of the other album, but it mainly focuses on Human Life instead of the whole universe. It has 5 themes : Life, Senses, Emotions, Intelligence and Enneagram.

If you don’t know what Enneagram is, it is a model which focuses on human psyche.  It’s divided into 9 basic personality types which are more or less connected to each other. It is said that each person has one personality type throughout his/her whole life, with possible influences from other types, which are called wings.

And what Ryan attempts is to represent as accurately as possible all the personality types, with all their characteristics, strengths, insecurities and hopes. I think he’s doing a phenomenal job with it! What’s more, each Enneagram song has various sounds weaved into it. Ryan calls it fingerprints, these short sounds are recorded by his friends and family who represent certain type of personality.

He’s done it before in other songs too, I think it’s a wonderful idea and makes the whole experience of listening to it even more significant and special.