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Sitting in his bedroom in Copenhagen one evening in 2008, arched over a shivering piano in the twilit cool, Brian Batz found himself measuring out sounds in cascading waves. Centuries earlier, beloved avant-garde composer Erik Satie declined the term musician, instead declaring himself a phonometrician-someone who measures sounds. The aching and otherworldly InchThird Drawer DownInch-the product of Batz's 2 a.m. chording-reflects an ecstatic phonometric approach for his first album under the moniker Sleep Party People. Full of arcane arrangements, broken and secondhand instruments, and manipulated vocals, the self-titled record has redoubled in mystic strength on the verge of it's 10-year anniversary reissue, due TK via TK. Batz began working on Sleep Party People as an alternative outlet from the band he'd been playing with, the opportunity to opt for the obscure decisions and creative idiosyncrasies on his own. InchI wanted to see how it would feel to not compromise with anyone and just do what I thought would work,Inch he explains. Without proper recording equipment or fancy gear, that meant summoning together the misfit musical tools in his apartment-including a busted piano, an outdated Roland TR-505 drum machine, a keyboard, a handful of assorted guitar pedals, and an acoustic guitar that the kindergarten where he worked was going to throw away. InchI sat in my apartment for a year and a half turning everything upside down and just trying to push my own limits,Inch Batz recounts. Inspired by everything from Satie to the Cocteau Twins, the bombast of My Bloody Valentine to the puzzle of Boards of Canada, Sleep Party People became a process of constant innovation.That experimentation clicked into place with the discovery of a distinct vocal sound, a series of effects layered over Batz's lyrics that feels at once hypnagogic in it's obscuring power and intimately fa
