Dopesmoker: A Personal History

Sleep's "Dopesmoker" figures into what is definitely the best, loudest, most heaviest vinyl record moment of my life (or close to it, anyway). After years of going to see Matt Pike gleefully grinding his teeth with one foot on the monitor, raining spark-showers of hot licks on our heads with High on Fire (I was at a show once where the "rock-type" people I came with actually scurried off and left because they couldn't handle the air-rippling volume), two friends and I decided to listen to "Dopesmoker" the way we imagined the dudes who made it would have wanted. That means that during a party at my house, me, my buddy Adam and my roommate Selena isolated ourselves from the group, went in my room, turned off the lights and played "Dopesmoker" all the way through, with the volume up so loud there was actually a breeze coming out of my speakers. I know this because I had my face pressed against one for all of side three. The experience was, uh, transcendent.

All four sides add up to over 60 minutes of music, and the first eight are no more than a guitar, bass and drum converging on a single, droned mantra. It's hypnotic induction via bass-tones. By the time Al Cisneros begins his guttural chant-singing at 8:24, people could have told us we were chickens and we would have believed them. We sat through all four sides of blistering volume (with the exception of a brief and temporary comedown 40 minutes in) without a single word passing between us — no "this is cool"s or anything dumb like that. And when someone opened the door and the light from the hallway came in and the final crushing moments of the last song faded, it really did feel like we had just returned from outer space. Heavy.

Since my neighbor practically attacked me with a chainsaw the next day, I wouldn't suggest trying this at home, but if you do want to re-create it, the key thing is the total darkness. Creepy.