Listening: Sleepless Inn

The Detroit-based duo Sleepless Inn debuted their brand of ambient nocturna-pop back in April with The Rainbow Room EP - Listen: "Lucky Penny" by Sleepless Inn.

The hip-hop-informed beat production of Eddie Logix supplements Laura Finlay's melodic sunshine-soul. The songs evoke the soundtrack of that dizzied inspirado that strikes amid the stark midnight milieu of city streets as they finally quiet down for the night - the loud kind of quiet that softly throttles your ears when the cars stop, the lights go low and the ringing of the world's distracting din fades away so that crisper beats and mellower melodies can percolate to the top.

Ultra-faint guitar samples resonate beneath Finlay's multi-tracked harmonization while a bulky bass booms out simple blurts like a resting heartbeat over scuffed-sounding rattly hooks.

"Escalators" was released last week - but it's just the latest production during whats proving to be a busy summer for Eddie Logix. 

Logix released an instrumental mixtape six weeks ago called Back Pages. This is some of Logix' most spaced-out trips, 3am-escapist fare, spiked with funk guitars and strutting brass ("Braincloud") and haunted with ambient drones and marching percussion ("Sunday Sage"). Logix has honed his knack for cerebral, evocative soundscapes, trundling beats jutting up against celestial synth reverberations and swooning bass tones splashed against rubbery guitar riffs, all of it swirling together, in and out of slower or faster grooves, capricious, like a busy brain's meditation on the edges of a dream as it switches it's beguiling samples. Oh, and...but of course, you'd sneak in a Dylan sample for these "...back pages..."

Not as overtly avant-garde as Flying Lotus and not as old-school revivalist as Yesterday's New Quintet - but somewhere in the middle - something closer to Dabrye, perhaps?