Subtitled "Ode to Goya", The Sleep of Reason is Berlin guitarist Arne Jansen's meditation on the work of Spanish painter Francisco Goya. But if that suggests something drily academic, the most prominent musical influence here is, somewhat incongruously, the sound of the Pat Metheny Group, with drummer Eric Schaefer perfectly catching the airy brightness of Metheny's Brazilian grooves and the guitarist artfully channelling his inner Pat on acoustic and electric instruments. In Jansen's playing there are echoes too of John Abercrombie, Kurt Rosenwinkel and the Edge (yes, him – a version of U2's Love is Blindness is one of the album's two covers), making for a likeable if puzzling album that, to these ears, conjures late- 20th-century Americana more successfully than it does 18th- century Spanish romanticism.
arnejansen.com