Album Review: Max Richter - Sleep/From Sleep

In its full, uninhibited setting — an eight-hour opus designed to correlate with a person's natural sleeping pattern, which has been done as a 'performance' in Berlin — composer Max Richter's Sleep is an awesome feat of aural auteurship that breaks the fourth wall in a unique way, an art-piece designed to fuse subliminally with the listener while opening up connections and conversations on dreams, relaxation and many other themes.

As a condensed, one-hour album, however, From Sleep is designed to be an overt listening experience. It defeats the purpose, despite its more-than-serviceable take on ambient minimalism.