If you have yet to check out the blonde-headed stepchild to Room 40, meet A Guide to Saints and their cavalcade of cassettes. The beautiful plastic casings, forgoing J-cards for a simpler and more effective artistic imprint; equally eye-pleasing cassettes that harmonize or contrast their casings for powerful Gestalt idealism – it’s all very art school dropout and yet, highly functional use of materials and typography that is lost in a world of collages and dystopian drawings.
The same is true for Riegler’s SLEEP HEALTH, a careful curation of the duality of good spirits and bad distractions A-side “Health” is a twinkle of chimes and buzzards; plucks playing a clock that is ticking toward decay. Time begins a slow drip that becomes a cascade of years and failing memories. “Sleep” seems more apropos as a metaphor for death than as the act of rejuvenation. Twisted bows meet taught strings as Hades plays you across Styx. But yours is not an eternity of damnation but that of reward. We’ve all sinned, given up ourselves and our faculties to forces we choose not to control. As our health fades, our dream stasis begins. Sleep is not something to be feared, it’s something to long for over the course of decades of living to best of one’s abilities. Do not covet what your neighbor has, but cherish what you have earned. Which, for now, is this tape from Riegler that you should carry with you like your lucky charm and your I.D.