When I Like To Sleep first emerged, the Norwegian instrumental trio’s sound combined polar opposites. Vibraphonist Amund Storløkken Åse, six-string-bass/guitar player Nicolas Leirtrø, and drummer Øyvind Leite were all schooled jazz musicians, and they all liked to rock. By putting these elements together, they fused vibes-forward post-bebop jazz with hammer-of-the-gods riffs.
Ten years and five albums down the road, they’ve filled in that middle space with studio sound manipulation and additional instrumentation. Amplification and effects have transformed the sounds that roll away from Storløkken Åse’s vibraphone, shifting from pure waves to sodium-vapor bursts. He now spends as much time playing Mellotron as mallets — a move sure to ratchet up I Like To Sleep’s score on the prog-o-meter.
On “Skagstad,” dubby treatments send Leite’s stark beats stumbling, as though they’re stoned and lost in a funhouse. Meanwhile, Leirtrø’s tone has taken on a compressed quality that concentrates the battering ram of his heavy moments and makes his leads on “Octopus” ooze like some strange new life squeezing out of that case of preserves your cousin sent you from Chernobyl.
Where I Like To Sleep’s writing once juxtaposed opposites, the trio now mixes elements together, exercising sharp instincts about how to strike a balance that makes the music as hooky as it is involving. On “Octopus,” Storløkken Åse snakes a spare melody through a tense groove while cosmic strings, filtered percussion, and guest Mats Gustafsson’s breathy flute pass overhead like wintry clouds.
Everything’s in its place, but it’s also on the move, headed right for your brain’s earworm zone.
— Bill Meyer, All Good Clean
https://magnetmagazine.com/2025/11/10/essential-new-music-i-like-to-sleeps-spectral-vibes/