No Turn Before the Shoreline

Sleepers Work is the alias of Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist William Flynn, who's toured with St. Vincent and worked with Acrylics and others. This project's full-length debut, No Turn Before the Shoreline, is a depiction of New York City, past and present. As a primarily instrumental work based on Flynn’s library of found and created sounds, the nine tracks here are open to endless interpretation. The six-and-a-half-minute “Lion” is a good tipping point: its clicking minimalism with repeated melodic hook is either a soothing, attractive sense of motion or a wandering jag not busy enough for one’s attention. If you fall in with the former interpretation, then it’s likely this album will interest you. Flynn describes “Through the Window” as “thinking about my grandparents and great-grandparents and wondering how they experienced New York while living here throughout the various decades of the 20th century.” It’s a solid backstory, but to the uninformed it still works as a solitary piece with several soulful sampled voices puncturing the sparse percussion and keyboard patches.