MDTS07: Janek Schaefer
“Asleep at the wheel… Mixtape” A3 – really

MDTS07: Janek Schaefer
“Asleep at the wheel… Mixtape” A4 – does

About the cassette:

“Asleep at the wheel…  Mixtape” is a collection of original music from the powerful large-scale installation which took place at Milton Keynes International Festival 2010. Imagine a ghost road of cars in a darkened highway, illuminated only by hazard lights crossing an abandoned supermarket interior. You are a passenger in the back seat. You can’t see through the misty windows and your only guide is the abstract soundscape from the car radio… Side A presents a series crackling daydream episodes. Some of the pieces are so short and smooth one barely notices them, like passing small objects on high speed with your floor to the metal. The compositions come as mysterious drenched distant calls and lullabies. Tiny fragments of hypnotic foundsound meet lush melodies emerging like memories from the past, otherworldly hymns and dew-like hiss. Side B’s “Wonderland” is a 20 minute uplifting piece that ponders life’s biggest and most abstract paradigms, bringing an air of revelation, discovery and rebirth with its shimmering sonic patterns and multi-layered trance-inducing sonorities. “Asleep at the wheel…” is a highly emotional adventure through your subconscious, a conversation with yourself in a dream-like state. The cassette is ideal for your glovebox, or walkman while roaming the streets.”

– Ivan Afanasyev

Janek Schaefer is a London based sound architect, which is convenient because before he began creating musical art he actually studied architecture! This academic training didn’t last as he discovered what amazing structures could be built with sonic walls. Since I’m from Austin, TX the phrase “Asleep at the Wheel” brings to mind country music made by a band also named Asleep at the Wheel, but Schaefer’s album IS NOT country music. It is a collection of original music from an installation which took place at Milton Keynes International Festival 2010. Side A is labeled “Driving Through Dawn” and contains a variety of compositions that drift by like shadowy figures glimpsed from the peripheral vision of an insomniac driver. The crackling warp of far off melodies disappear then return and guitar lines rise out of half remembered songs before they too become paranoid reminders of dark secrets left behind in a town no one wants to recall. Schaefer’s composition is the REAL soundtrack to the movie Drive. Side B is labeled “Wonderful” and is the slight ray of hope at the end of a dark film. Sustained drones are the glue that hold together this piece of ambient music and what a compliment to the first side’s fractured half awake state of uncertainty. Very cool!

- Jeff Daily / Cassette Gods

The 200 minutes of inspiring spoken word content from the in-car soundtracks are available as a free to download Audiofile Album at the audiOh!Room here.

If you have a nice old car cassette player, you will be able to play it on the road, and keep it in your glove box of course.