Sleep
Studio album by Max Richter
Released	September 4, 2015 (2015-09-04)
Recorded	2015
Studio	Avatar, New York City, US AIR, London, UK StudioKino, Berlin, Germany
Genre	Ambient[1] chamber[2] electronic[2] drone[2]
Length	8:24:21 From Sleep: 59:59
Label	Deutsche Grammophon
Producer	Max Richter Christian Badzura (exec. producer) Yulia Mahr (exec. producer)
Max Richter chronology
Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons (2012) Sleep (2015) From Sleep (2015)

Sleep is an eight-and-a-half hour concept album based around the neuroscience of sleep^[3] by German-British composer Max Richter.^[4][5] It was released on September 4, 2015, accompanied by a one-hour version with variations, From Sleep,^[6] later remixed as Sleep Remixes.^[7]

The documentary Max Richter's Sleep, directed by Natalie Johns, was released in April 2020 and focuses on Richter and Mahr's performances of Sleep in Los Angeles, Berlin, Sydney, and Paris.^[8] In March 2023, Richter released Sleep: Tranquility Base EP, with new versions of themes from Sleep.^[9]

Background

Sleep was conceived by Richter and his partner, the visual artist Yulia Mahr.^[10] It is targeted to fit a full night's rest. Richter talked with American neuroscientist David Eagleman while working on the album's piece to learn about how the brain functions during sleep. Richter stated, "Sleeping is one of the most important things we all do ... We spend a third of our lives asleep and it's always been one of my favourite things, ever since I was a child. ... For me, Sleep is an attempt to see how that space when your conscious mind is on holiday can be a place for music to live."^[11]

In the album's credits Richter describes Sleep as an eight-hour lullaby that is meant to be listened to at night. It is scored for piano, cello, two violas, two violins, organ, soprano vocals, synthesizers and electronics. The piece comprises 31 sections in slow tempo. These range from less than three minutes to over thirty, with an average duration of just over fifteen minutes. The sections are variations of five themes.

Live performances

Sleep was performed in its entirety from midnight to 8:00 AM at the Wellcome Collection in 2015 as the climax of the BBC Radio 3 "Science and Music" weekend.^[16] Audience members watched from beds instead of chairs.^[11] The performance set records for the longest broadcast and longest live broadcast of a single piece of music.^[11] The album was also performed at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2017,^[17] and outdoors in Grand Park, Los Angeles in 2018. The Los Angeles performances had 560 beds and were timed so the final movement, "Dream 0 (till break of day)" would occur at dawn.^[18][19][20]

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	79/100[21]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[22]
Drowned in Sound	9/10[23]
The Line of Best Fit	8/10[24]
Pitchfork	7.0/10.0[2]
Uncut	[25]

Sleep received wide acclaim from contemporary music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 79, based on 7 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".^[21]

Jon Falcone gave the album a very positive review, stating, "Sleep implores you for companionship and bleeds into itself as it bleeds into the listener. Typing while the fizz of ‘Never Fade Into Nothingness’ plays makes transforms Word documents in an epic dance of black pixels on white light, binary marks scratching into a too-bright glassy reflection. Walking while the echo-drenched monastic vocals of ‘Non-Eternal’ exposes that the world we occupy is haunted is exhilarating and avoiding awkward work colleagues as ‘If You Came This Way’ patters out its motif, that dangles held violin notes over electronic burbles, is to experience the sound of solace itself."^[23]

Grayson Haver Currin of Pitchfork Media gave the album a positive review, stating, "At its best, Sleep feels like compositionally rigorous new age music. It’s a place in which you can settle for a while, with or without a pillow, and emerge only when you are ready to rejoin the restive world."^[2] Currin was also slightly critical of the release, stating, "Sleep, then, is simply too didactic as a name. It’s a command that tells us how to enjoy something that clearly has other uses. That handle, combined with Richter’s conceit, has turned the record into a kind of clickbait story, too, which seems entirely antithetical to Richter’s point."^[2]

Commercial performance

As of February 2020 Sleep had peaked at position 44 in the UK album charts, with sales of 40,151.^[26] As of July 2020, Sleep had almost 500 million streams.^[27]

Track listing

Personnel

Main personnel

• Max Richter – composer, electronics, liner notes, mixing, organ, piano, primary artist, producer, quotation author, synthesizer
• American Contemporary Music Ensemble – strings (ensemble)
• Grace Davidson – vocals (soprano)
• Brian Snow – cello
• Clarice Jensen – cello
• Caleb Burhans – viola
• Ben Russell – violin
• Yuki Numata Resnick – violin

Additional personnel

• Christian Badzura – project manager
• Tom Bailey – assistant engineer
• Tim Cooper – liner notes
• Rupert Coulson – engineer, mixing
• David Eagleman – liner notes
• Merle Kersten – art direction
• Yulia Mahr – executive producer
• Mandy Parnell – mastering
• Anna-Lena Rodewald – project manager
• Mike Terry – photography
• Alejandro Venguer – engineer
• Mareike Walter – design

Charts

Sleep

From Sleep (one-hour version)

Certifications

See also

• Long Ambients 1: Calm. Sleep. (2016) and Long Ambients 2 (2019), ambient albums by Moby
• Music and sleep

References