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Music

Here's an 8-hour Song To Listen To While Sleeping

Max Richter's "SLEEP" is a modern lullaby for our unconscious mind.

You can get a lot done in eight hours. It's a working day, it's a flight across the Atlantic, it's a night's sleep—it's also the length of a new piece of music by British composer Max Richter called SLEEP. If it sounds like something that might send you off to the land of slumber, that's exactly the idea.

“It’s an eight-hour lullaby," says Richter. “It’s my personal lullaby for a frenetic world. A manifesto for a slower pace of existence." Richter's work takes elements from classical, post-rock, and electronic music and this new piece has no words but is composed for piano, strings, vocals, and electronics and will be premiered in a concert performance in Berlin in September. It will start at midnight and continue until 8AM. The audience will be given beds to lie on and watch/sleep through the event.

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Although a long performance, it's not the longest performance of a musical piece. John Cage's As Slow As Possible takes place in a 14th century former convent in Halberstadt, Germany. The piece began in 2001, starting with 17 months of total silence, with each chord often lasting months. Cage never specified how long the piece should take and this rendition is due to span over six centuries with an end date of 2640.

Max Richter

SLEEP will be released as a download and an abridged one-hour version. “You could say that the short one is meant to be listened to and the long one is meant to be heard while sleeping,” Richter notes, adding “It’s really an experiment to try and understand how we experience music in different states of consciousness."

Inspired by the (non) activity of catching a few Zs, Richter worked with U.S. neuroscientist David Eagleman to gain scientific insight. "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" Richter explains.

SLEEP will be available on CD, vinyl, download, and streaming on September 4th. You can find out where Richter will be in concert here.

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