Sleep Train | Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra

“This suite was created May 2-8, when my partner and I were deep in sleepless delirium with our 4-month-old. I arranged some songlets that were running in my head into a single composition meant to evoke the looping, loopy thoughts people face in a quarantined life. I was interested in how quarantine (and parenthood) keeps asking us to meet the moment, and how each moment calls up its own mantra, which quickly becomes one’s entire story, until it gives way to another moment and mantra, which may be much like the one that came before.

I sent my vocal arrangement to my bandmates, who responded: Ian Riggs added bass; Vito Dieterle added horns and melodica; Eben Levy added guitar, percussion, keys and production.

As a band, we’ve recorded four studio albums, but our identity is mostly that of a ‘live act’. Much of our energy in the past 8 years has gone into making theater pieces that tell a story through music — our version of musicals. ‘Sleep Train’ is the first time we’ve recorded something without working on it together in a room, without ever having played it live. We sent a few emails back and forth, but we never spoke about it. It was challenging working on it while apart, not being able to speak or read each other’s body language, but that also felt like the opportunity. And after 15 years of playing together, we had to dialogue through the music. The guys went to places I never would have imagined, everyone adding mantras onto one another’s mantras, and the piece is exactly what I hoped it would be.”

Artist: Ethan Lipton & his Orchestra

Title of the work: Sleep Train

Year: 2020

Medium/Format: Mp3 file

Duration of the work: 6΄30’’

Band:

Ethan Lipton: lyrics and vocals

Eben Levy: guitar, percussion, keys, production

Ian M. Riggs: bass

Vito Dieterle: saxophones, melodica