Over the last few years the devout disciples of Arvo Pärt and introspective cinema soundtracks have slow-cooked a stew of plenary pulchritude from which we are just now reaping the benefits. The so-called “post-classical” movement has burgeoned past the point of barely recognizable sub-genre to a powerhouse of beauty and sound with the likes of Johann Johannsson, Danny Norbury, Jacaszek and Library Tapes, to name a mere handful. The artist currently in question, David Wenngren, is the primary driving force behind Library Tapes. While he’s released six albums as Library Tapes, Sleepless Nights appears to be his first release under the name his mother gave him.

One time while listening to Sleepless Nights, I had taken a break to watch some TV and have a snack. I ended up checking out a Nova program on fractal math and its applications to world problems and manifestations in nature and evolution. In the most rudimentary yet complex way I heard the infinite reiteration of fractal repetition in the music made by David Wenngren. Now, Sleepless Nights is certainly no perfect musical computation of a Mandelbrot Set, but I did hear the endless return of the ocean, which can loosely be seen in a manner of fractal math with the right goggles on, I guess.

Everything about this record pulses and sways and heaves incessantly like the waves of the ocean and our human experience of it from the relative safety of a boat or ship. This is no Royal Caribbean pleasure cruise. No, this is a moody, introspective meditation upon the ocean and our relationship with it in survival and disappearance. Here is a tale of being lost at sea, witnessing beauty and complexity in simplicity while searching for a way home. Occasionally, we find hope in the finest granular digital distortions tucked far away in the coves of echoes and resonance, where waves of sound go to die on the beach of the beholder’s earlobes. Some of that distortion might be low-budget mastering, but I think it adds to the particular character of the music, so I like to think it’s purposeful. Sadly, monotonously, that hope succumbs to the waves and is washed out by the undertow and we are left to contemplate our loneliness again, confined to our ship like some sea-faring astronaut. We listen to the ocean and our ships collide in a perpetual symphony of solitude. In fact, you can distinctly hear it at the beginning of “Unreal” as it creaks like the lacquered and fire-treated Heart Pine beams of a pre-steam ship moaning under the strain of the relentless ocean.

Even the terminology of ship measurements applies directly to my aqueous analogies to David Wenngren’s heart-wrenching expression: breadth, volume, depth, weight, capacity andlength.

The breadth of the decay Wenngren bestows upon his piano hums, churns and chops like a hustling diesel at sea (among many, see “Mountains of Broken Chords”). A perplexed, perhaps inexperienced captain stands outside the pilot house and searches the stars for guidance in myriad manners. This breadth of decay, over the course of the record, will inhabit different frequencies of such engine-like sonorities with barely a notice from the crew until it downshifts to a hesitant crawl. “06.08, When Everything is Quiet” is a pure musical escape into that moment.

There is also a flutter in so much of the sound on Sleepless Nights, that the sheer volume reminds one just how vast and repetitive the ocean is; waves lose individual distinction from one another and the patterns replicate outward from an absent core almost limitlessly. Not only are wave patterns almost infinite at sea, but the way things sound on the ocean will spread out forever as well. If you’ve ever spent a night on the ocean while it’s raining hard, you’ll instantly know what I mean. The first minute and a half of “For D.N.” (“For Danny Norbury”?) shatters the calm like countless raindrops pounding the abstract surface of the ocean.

Wenngren’s ability to assign both uplifting and downtrodden sound to the same undulating motifs reminds me of the depth of the ocean. “Another Spring” reflects that with the image of sunlight committing its entire resource of energy to battle the ocean’s power to engulf and even destroy light—and also to bounce it right back at the same time. It is as if the central line of every paradox is frozen there in that comforting sight; maybe the answer is no longer as important as just perceiving the possibilities of two actions that simultaneously, endlessly, negate each other and nurture the other’s existence. Somewhere within those depths is a multitude of jellyfish existing as God in the same capacity as a feeding frenzy of humboldt squid. The reiterations are endless, and somehow Wenngren captures that with piano, strings, found sounds and sublime electronics on “Another Spring” (and it’s opposite, “Another Winter”).

Now, on “Mountains of Broken Chords” we hear Wenngren’s dimension of weight, and never has a vessel this size displaced so much. With just the drawn out layers of slow-to-die piano chords, the ocean within seems to have filled immensely, immeasurably even, but without robbing other thoughts or emotions of their space. This, rightly, leads us to capacity. On “For P.B. (“Peter Broderick”, I presume), it feels as though he has come to capacity with this record and the journey at sea. He is ready to return home as the song slowly fades out—that slow hum of decay is there again—but this time it sounds as though the boat is returning to port. The simple, plodding piano in its repetition drags you home, but only if you’re willing. And after the length of the journey, the distance that has been put into the mental and the physical, “The Long Awaited Sleep” returns you to the beginning. This is not just to land safely at a familiar stop, but to reassure you of the absolute fact that there will always be a next time; the reiteration of the infinite and immaculate has no choice but to continue stamping the same limitless patterns onto the universe, no matter how easy or difficult they may be to see.

Waves, whether on the ocean or in sound, are always identifiable, but the subtle nuances and changes to the larger pattern are what make life worth paying attention to. Wenngren provides so much to contemplate with Sleepless Nights in this way. In fact, it seems that Wenngren himself has employed painstaking attention to detail and its effect on the whole in many ways, even his playing of the different instruments. This is something, understated, that I highly appreciate in his self-knowledge of strengths and weaknesses.

The piano is obviously Wenngren’s biggest strength, but it is his approach to the cello and violin that may garner more accolades. He utilizes restraint and respect for the boundaries of his playing capabilities (assuming he plays everything; there’s no info to the contrary). This produces a richer, more confident sound to compliment the piano. The scope of play may be more finite than a better player, but he more than makes up for it in his astute sagacity.

It is a humility one might learn and hone while on the ocean.

-Gabriel Bogart