Track Premiere & Review: Some Pills for Ayala, Sleep Walkers
Posted in Reviews on June 14th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream the title-track of Some Pills for Ayala’s Sleep Walkers. Album is out July 7 available to preorder on Bandcamp.]
Sleepwalking has long been a ready-to-use analogue for conformity, and while there may be that aspect to the lyrics of Some Pills for Ayala‘s second full-length, Sleep Walkers, given the title, the astronaut and weed on the cover and the ultra-fuzzed largesse that ensues on album opener “A Flower in My Left Eye” and much of what follows, one wonders if the Chile-based outfit isn’t also nodding at the band Sleep as well. Certainly that leadoff could be said to be taking Sleep for a walk in its steady roll of stonerized buzz, and the later title-track accompanies its meditative bassline with a Cisernos-style monotone-ish vocal — also organ or maybe Mellotron — so there may be some in-genre communion happening across the nine-song/45-minute long-player from the Santiago-based solo-project of Néstor Ayala Cortés.
It follows behind 2022’s The Crows That Sing and two 2021 EPs, Space Octopus EP (review here) and a self-titled, and finds Cortés once again handling all instruments himself and helming the recording process at his Camino la Luna home studio. If that sounds somewhat insular as making a record by yourself at home might be, Sleep Walkers counteracts that both in being mixed by David Veliz at Planetario Fuzz Recs in Horcón and through its general expansiveness of sound. In its arrangements, it is a full-band style collection, as all Some Pills for Ayala‘s output has been to-date, give-or-take; drums, bass, guitar, keys, vocals, and so on. Cortés even manages an effective psych-tinged self-jam in the solo section of closer “The Way I See the Sound” before the repetitions of the synesthetic lyric “I hear color and see sound” and, after a break of silence, jams again as a kind of epilogue/secret reprise.
“A Flower in My Left Eye” opens heavy, and that’s ground that Some Pills for Ayala touches again on “Let Me Free,” punctuated by sharp, maybe-programmed snare sounds and underscored in its multi-layer-vocal verse by dense rumble of low end, as well as side B’s “Smile and Lie” and the penultimate “Sore.” What these songs have in common aside from their methodology is that they’re shorter than the five cuts that surround them; “A Flower in My Left Eye” is 4:07, none of the other of Sleep Walkers‘ heaviest tracks tops four minutes, and they move accordingly in terms of tempo.
To contrast, more psychedelic-leaning songs like “Into Oblivion” or the bassy centerpiece “Reflections,” or even the strutting second track “Blood or Love” — previously issued as a standalone single under the title “No More Love… No More Blood?” — with its right-on swing and ride cymbal foreshadow of “Sleep Walkers” to come, early Om meeting with Uncle Acid a bit in its instrumental/vocal blend between the verse and chorus, come through with a focus more on expanse than impact, and in the mellow fluidity of “Into Oblivion,” Cortés is patient and considered in crafting an immersive space for the listener.
His style of melody will be familiar to those who’ve heard At Devil Dirt, and some of the weightier punch throughout Sleep Walkers could be called a carry-over as well, but the branching-out in terms of sound is palpable, and if heavy is the stem of one of the pot leaves on the cover, than the multiple points surrounding might be different facets of it that are brought together on the album. That “The Way I See the World” ends the record and is also the longest track at 8:54 doesn’t feel like a coincidence, but the songs are also arranged alphabetically — as becomes apparent when one looks at side B with “Sleep Walkers,” “Smile and Lie” and “Sore” in succession — so it may well be. Aural kismet? Stranger things have definitely happened.
Through these various shifts and twists in style, Sleep Walkers is able to pivot smoothly in no small part owing to Cortés‘ strength as a songwriter. Again, that won’t be a revelation for those who followed from At Devil Dirt or who took on The Crows That Sing last year, but for being genuinely ‘solo’ in the writing, performance and recording, is distinctly full-band in its presentation to the degree that, if a lineup (or a laptop) were assembled, the songs could be played live. Whether there’s any interest on the part of Cortés in doing so, I don’t know, but it exists as a possibility, and on a record with such depth of mix, where one might not immediately characterize it as the work of one person alone, the spirit in the material is less insular than the phrase “solo-project” implies.
This is mirrored as well in the delivery of the material. “Reflections” as the centerpiece is representative in its sprawl and hypnotic repetitions across its first 90 seconds before it turns to fully-realized twists of fuzz and layers of vocal melody and effects. It is big, grand in an organic manner, and actively working to engage its audience. “Smile and Lie” and “Sore,” the pair of shorter, harder-hitting cuts before the finale, are no less emblematic of Some Pills for Ayala‘s quality of craft. They are neither haphazard nor lazy, they swing with vital fervency and in the case of the latter especially, speak to a living history of South American heavy rock and roll of which At Devil Dirt and Cortés‘ efforts here are part.
In “The Way I See the World,” Sleep Walkers encounters its greatest expanse and highlights the creativity at root beneath its construction. Languid, melodious guitar stretches out atop likewise flowing groove, bass and drums working to complement the exploration happening above in the mix as the vocals lend presence before the instrumental takeoff of the second half, from which — counter to accusations one might level against a solo-project as self-indulgent — the vocals return in the above-noted lyrical repetition before the song departs, somewhat suddenly, to silence, then noise, before picking up and light-chugging its way out to residual feedback and noise that end just before the nine-minute mark.
Given the breadth and seemingly willful changes in stylistic lean from one song to the next that happen throughout Sleep Walkers, I’m less inclined to guess what might be on a subsequent release from Some Pills for Ayala than I am to suggest simply that Cortés will keep it going. It’s a universe of infinite possibility, of course, but given the heart and obvious passion for the work that’s been put into this material, I would expect continued growth along the varied course charted here. So much the better as Sleep Walkers follows The Crows That Sing and looks further outward. That, too, may well continue. At present though, accessibility is an asset, not a detriment, to this second album, and multiple avenues of potential progression are laid out among those already realized.
