Sleep Party People – Floating (Blood & Biscuits)

Even without Sleep Party People’s history of rabbit masks, spooky songs with millions of hits on YouTube – ‘I’m Not Human At All’ – and the growing confidence that Brian Batz, the Danish multi-instrumentalist creating this electronic dance of death, inspires every time he sends a couple of notes flying to set the scene, at its best Floating is an instantly eerie peek down the rabbit hole to the other side.

Throughout the album there are sounds of light ascension and graveyards. Light hoppy pops in ‘Change In Time’ and the gliding vocals in ‘Shattered Glass’ are examples of Floating’s….floaty moments. But the album is at its best and most unique when Batz turns up the pitch on his voice to lend his tones to darker, eerier sounds.

‘In Another World’ has violins that sound like they are played by the undead in a graveyard and ‘Only A Shadow’ is able to identify itself as some sort of murder lullaby. And then in one of the most unlikely places – and only the second song in – a sampled quote appears to pretty much sum up the entire album; “All his life he’s been trying to find out what happened when he died, and now…now he’s going to find out.”

Of Floating Batz says, “I wanted it to sound more like a band than a one-man-project this time.” and it does. There’s some drifting towards a normal indie structure in patches. ’Floating Blood Of Mine’ meanders between notching in vocals and twisty guitar fills. And sneering vocals in ‘A Stanger Among Us,’ rasping on about “You are a tough one to pin down.”

The best songs on this album are oddly warped. At times it can sit alongside Boards of Canada, at times something in the graveyard at times it can feel like a tale from the Grimm’s. And hopefully Sleep Party People is not drifting from the stranger sounds that set it aside. Batz himself suggests a bit of change: “the whole feel of the album is very different from the two earlier releases. It's 100% hand-played and totally organic and analog.” As with any artist that finds a sound of their own there must be freedom to move before its done to death, but with this album Sleep Party People’s strengths still lie in the darker places, with slightly unintelligible lyrics and an over-arching feeling that, “He’s been trying to find out what happened when he dies, and now…”