Night Keeper

Description

Night Keeper is a collaborative album by New York artist Aaron Landsman and former Swans guitarist Norman Westberg, based on Landsman's eponymous play. Westberg recorded it with performer Jehan O. Young for the Swiss Hallow Ground label, with Landsman producing the record. The original play was first performed in spring 2023 at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens and filled the austere industrial space with spoken text, choreography, projections, and music in dim light and, at times, complete darkness. Westberg and Young then took it to the studio to record it as a two-part album during which its textural, loop- and sample-based sounds set the stage for Young’s soothing and sonorous vocal performance. "Night Keeper" is a show inspired by insomnia and the nocturnal wanderings of the human mind – about time and memory. Westberg and Young elegantly capture its essence over these approximately 44 minutes with a somnambulistic album, allowing sound and meaning to melt into one another. The initial spark for Night Keeper was a series of near-sleepless nights in different neighborhoods of a perpetually insomniac city. Instead of trying to force himself back to sleep by any means necessary, Landsman began to write down his thoughts.