Artist: Blank Page Empire
Title: Sleeping Sound EP
Record Label: Red Cord Records
Release Date: 11/27/2012
Reviewer: Sara Walz
Track Listing:
- Torn From The Ribs
- Recluse
- Matrimony
- Rapid Eye Movement
- Weeper
- Mountain of Youth
After toying with the idea of disbanding, Blank Page Empire decided to give it another shot, and we are glad they did. After member changes, tours, and a couple of years the Minneapolis band is set to release an EP titled, Sleeping Sound, their debut release on Red Cord Records. The band feels this is their most heartfelt album to date saying, “We’ve come to realize that we must progress in order to find our identity. So we started writing from the heart, functioning as a group, no longer focusing on the past or the future, but instead fixating on what makes all of us excited about music again. What we ended up with is what we think is the best music we have ever made. Immensely different from the songs we wrote a year ago, but in a primitive way very much the same. Music that makes us move, feel, dance, think, and laugh. We could ask for nothing more.”
It certainly is different from “old” Blank Page Empire and if asked to come up with one word to describe Sleeping Sound that word would be ambient. There is an ethereal thread that runs through the whole album that creates a dichotomy of heavy but light. “Torn From The Ribs” is leans heavily on the music while the vocals play the background. “Recluse” is song number 2 and feels more heady and has much more noticeable vocals with lead singer, Ryan, crying out, “I’m fine down here, I’m fine down here.”
The current single, “Weeper”, is a drum driven number that feels somber but somehow manages to maintain a soaring feel with some clean gang vocal ooh’s and wooahs. It’s the lyrics that really drive this song home, “The earth is like a marble that’s pinched between the corner and Your thumb and it must be a burden, Lord, to carry us all one by one”, the imagery reminds us how small we are but still how much we are loved.
Overall: The album bleeds with the maturity of a band who has been through rough times, has fought their way through, and has come out on the other side with a solid perspective on what makes them who they are. They want you to know that too, saying, “Come see us play. Come talk to us. Find out who we really are.”
RIYL: Abandon Kansas, Ascend the Hill,