The first release of Séance Centre's "Speculative Ethnography” series is an EP of Burroughs-inspired analog rhythm-scapes, conjured from the nocturnal Parisian imagination of Shelter (Alan Briand).

Recorded directly to cassette 4-track late at night in Briand’s apartment in Paris with a gathering of temperamental vintage gear, Le Sommeil Vertical captures a somnambulant journey into vibrant analog nether-regions. The hazy sonics harken back to ‘80s DIY cassette culture, but refracted through a prism of fourth world melodics and early IDM rhythm experiments. The tracks are titled after Burroughs’ Cities of the Red Night, and the book acts as a talisman for the album, setting sci-fi surrealism within expansive arid psychic landscapes. The trance-inducing terrain, mapped out in warm 1/4” tape, moves through phased backstreets, AFX-arrondissements, and dub municipalities. This is music on the nod, an elixir for the sleepwalking flaneur.

Alan Briand has been with Séance Centre from the start, as designer and European emissary — a wunderkind of many talents, we’ve always trusted his ears as well as his eyes. We’re pleased to release this mesmerizing EP as a limited edition pressing with risograph printed insert and designed for future archives.