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┌────────┐
────┤ Info ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Artist | Sleep
Title | Dopesmoker
Genre | Rock
Source | Vinyl
Label | Southern Lord Rip | 03.20.2015
Catalog | LORD158 Time | 83:55
Bitrate | 253kbps Size | 153.5mb
Freq | 48.0kHz Encoder | Lame 3.98.4
┌────────┐
────┤ Tracks ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
A. Dopesmoker 21:24
B. Dopesmoker 20:21
C. Dopesmoker 21:32
D1. Holy Mountain 11:29
D2. Sonic Titan 09:09
┌────────┐
────┤ Notes ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Almost 20 years after it was recorded and rejected by London
Records and then made public as unofficial bootlegs or
unagreeable edits, stoner-rock legends Sleep's storied one-
song, hour-long third album is finally available through a
remastered, re-illustrated reissue.
Tree stoned kids walk into an expensive studio with the idea
of recording one song that lasts for an hour and opens with
the line, "Drop out of life with bong in hand." During the
course of the tune, which changes every time they play it,
they equate weed with most every sacred religious symbol,
take solos that stretch for minutes, and sing in some
malevolent half-chant incantation. They won't allow it to be
edited for radio play, and they don't want to break it into
tracks. And, by the way, the label footing the bill is the
same 50-year-old institution that released music by the
Rolling Stones, Ray Charles and, the Moody Blues: With every
year that passes, both the tale and the tape of Dopesmoker
seem a little more ridiculous.
The third album by a trio of 20-something San Jose, Calif.,
burnouts called Sleep, Dopesmoker resulted from a major-label
skirmish over a band that had made two very good but not
altogether great LPs of distorted, bluesy, and bleary-eyed
rock. But those records-- 1991's Volume One and 1993's Holy
Mountain-- sported would-be singles, editable jams like "Holy
Mountain", "Snowblind", and "The Wall of Yawn" that might
have found a home on the radio dial in the filthy backwash of
grunge. In the battle between Elektra and London Records,
however, Sleep didn't seem so interested in who might pay the
most to get their stoner rock on the air; as guitarist Matt
Pike, bassist Al Cisneros, and drummer Chris Hakius have said
since, they wanted to go with the label that would pay for
the album and mostly leave the music alone. London ostensibly
signed off on such creative control. So after more than a
year of legal wrangling to slip out of an old label contract,
Sleep finally went with London and, in 1996, entered Record
Two, the aforementioned well-equipped Northern California
studio, with producer Billy Anderson and, as the fable goes,
a lot of weed.
Their plan was to record the one-song album they'd been
writing and testing live for at least four years. As Cisneros
told Decibel writer J. Bennett a decade later, London had
approved the idea, but the deep pockets began to get
concerned as soon as they started to hear the music. Despite
London's anxiety, technical troubles, and interpersonal
tensions, Sleep finally finished the track in two month-long
sessions. The label would never release it: After a series of
contentious remixes and edits by a number of different hands
hired by London, the imprint eked out a few cheap promos
before deciding to can Sleep. The band broke up (in
retrospect, they've said, they were headed this way with or
without London), and during the next decade, three labels
issued unofficial bootlegs or unagreeable edits of
Dopesmoker, or as the band later called it, Jerusalem.
Now, 16 years after it was recorded, Sleep's storied third
and easily best album is finally available through a
remastered, re-illustrated reissue. Loud and more lucid,
Southern Lord's greenest version of Dopesmoker pushes the
record's highs to higher places and gives the whole hour just
a bit more power. The trio has long complained that the
previous versions didn't understand their intended
aesthetic-- the art, the mixing, any of it. But a brilliant
new cover by artist Arik Roper, who also designed the
previously popular Tee-Pee version of the disc, pictures the
"Weedians" of which Cisernos sings, making their pilgrimage
to Nazareth, endless bongs strapped to their backs, an
extra-terrestrial landscape in the distance. As Pike
exclaimed to The Quietus earlier this year, "This one is
going to look so fucking cool, it's so rad." That statement
should rightly apply not only to the cover but also to this
entire reissue, which at long lasts fulfills the red-eyed
vision of the people who made Dopesmoker while confirming the
record's legacy both as a stoner-metal and psychedelic-rock
masterpiece. This is one of the great major-label casualties,
finally available in proper form.
When Sleep broke up after the failure of Dopesmoker, the trio
split into two unequal halves: Almost immediately, Matt Pike
started High on Fire, who have continued adding different
kinds of fuel to the same generalized burn. Years later,
Hakius and Cisneros would return as Om to explore the same
iterative modalities that made listening to Dopesmoker feel
like an instant inhalation. Dopesmoker is the perfect
culmination before the collapse; Pike's bombast meet Om's
repetition, a friction that rendered ideal sparks. Though the
lengths of his solos are anything but modest, his playing
itself is largely textural; when he steps into the spotlight,
Pike lets repeated notes follow each other into a
kaleidoscopic flurry. The persona of the shirtless, shouting
dude at the helm of High on Fire remained in check, so as not
to distract from the music's naturally meditative state.
To that end, Hakius and Cisneros weren't quite locked into
Om's repetition addiction yet, either. Instead, they pushed
against each other, Cisneros countering Pike's lumbering
riffs with ample burl and perfectly sculpted tone.
Historically, Hakius has criticized his own playing during
the Dopesmoker sessions. But Dopesmoker is an infinitely
explorable listen, the kind of record that will goad your
attention through miniscule rabbit holes whether or not
you're as stoned as the people who made it. Hakius' pulse is
the constant carrot, then, filling the spaces when the band
aggresses, forcing them forward when they pull back. He is a
reminder to continue toward Nazareth.
And that's perhaps what remains most impressive about
Dopesmoker, especially hearing it again for the first time
through yet another reissue: It's an hour of adventure and
momentum, where the lumber and the repetition somehow always
push ahead. At a moment when black metal reinventers and D-
beat revivers seem to dominate large sections of the heavy
music world, maybe the thought of a resin-voiced singer
intoning for an hour over riffs that wrap into themselves and
drums that aim ever for infinity seems boring. But no matter
how many times they had to record or rehearse "Dopesmoker" to
master it, or no matter how much pressure London placed on
them to make something more commercial than personal, Sleep
sound as if their very existence depends upon the successful
exercise of this weed ritual. In a sense, it's safe to say it
did. This record's influence on substance, style, and simple
ambition within heavy metal has long outlived the band that
made it.
Southern Lord's reissue comes with no elaborate set of liner
notes or verbose essay concerning the serpentine origin of
the release itself. Rather, the tracklist is simply offered
on the back cover, as well as the written-and-performed-by
bona fides and the production credits. The insert consists
entirely of a triptych of Pike, Hakius, and Cisneros
performing and a photo of a massive piece of cardboard
itemizing the contents of the titanic tune: "Hot Lava Man 4x
All Slow (Vocals)", it reads in one spot. The only bonus is a
fidelity-compromised live take of "Holy Mountain". It might
be tempting to attribute this lack of archival scholarship to
stoner lassitude, or to wish for the official story to serve
as a sort of reverse score for the long-evasive music. But
the story of Dopesmoker and the dissolution of Sleep have
been passed around enough-- written about in books, discussed
in interviews, warped and exaggerated by years of bong-
ripping bros sharing the record with a friend for the first
time. This reissue of Dopesmoker doesn't waste time with an
introduction that this record no longer requires.
┌────────┐
────┤ Group ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘