Lowell Brams’ new album “Music For Insomnia” is without doubt the most difficult album I have ever listened to. Lowell collaborates with Sufjan Stevens (his step son and co-founder of the Asthmatic Kitty label) on an eight song album of unbridled sonic exploration that I imagine one can only truly comprehend if they have gone two to three weeks without a proper nights sleep. Both Lowell and Sufjan are insomniacs, and the title of the record leaves little doubt as to who it is aimed at which also easily explains why I have little chance of understanding or enjoying it. Truth be told, I actually only listened to this album in it’s entirety once and couldn’t sleep afterwards, resulting in a restless night of thinking “Insomnia From Music” may have been a better title, along with every anagram it’s possible to make using the album‘s title (“Sonic Uniform Aims” was the best I could come up with).

Opening track ‘Chattering Garden Trolls’ is an arrhythmic, discordant combination of keys, strings and percussion. The title is well chosen, as the noise combinations fill the listener’s head with unnervingly menacing fairytale images of small beings in hurried conversation at the bottom of a dark garden. It’s difficult to take in, and after hearing it for the first time I began to dread the rest of the album would involve a lot more of the same.

Unfortunately I was right. Brams’ second offering on this album is ‘Alpha to Theta’. Nearly thirteen minutes of strings, bells, beeps and what sounds like a harmonium. There’s no distinguishable time signature. Instead a soundscape of rising and falling melodies, all seeming to operate independently of each other bemuse the listener until the synthesizer that zips through the track becomes more prominent and is used to create a comparatively dramatic ending.

It goes on like this. Track four, ‘Hypnagogic Hallucination’ (a hallucination that occurs during the half asleep state experienced when waking or falling asleep, for those of you who don’t know but can’t be arsed to google it) is just fucking mental. It’s 12 minutes long and features a banging sound that is (up until this point) as close to a beat as this album has managed, but yet again clearly devoid of any rhythm whatsoever.

One track actually does have a beat to it. Track seven, ‘A Dream About Vince Guaraldi’ is the only song I can still tolerate listening to, and the only song with any distinguishable time signature, a comforting four/four that is a welcome relief after the disjointed musical anarchy of the rest of the album.

I feel rather specious giving this album a bad review. It’s not meant for me and I’m not going to pretend I understand it. I usually manage to get some shut eye when I go to bed, and a number of natural remedies or a night in the pub are always there to help me sleep should I need it. I’m under the impression that the majority of the people who listen to this album won’t make it through the first three tracks, I know I wouldn’t have done if I wasn’t preparing to write this as, despite it’s originality, avant-garde experimentalism on this scale does nothing for me.

So it seems Lowell Brams has picked a rather small market to make a record for, as I don’t know of many insomniacs, or fans of Lowell’s work for that matter. If I meet one in the near future however, I promise to force him to user rate this album so that a more balanced view can be presented.