1. the darkness of ages
2. the pit under the castle
3. the pigmen at the window
4. the fall of babylon
5. the darkness of time
6. the endless plains
7. the remembered chill
8. the burning frost
9. the cold sun rising
10. the shadows approach
11. the iron red sun

Reviews/press releases;

Heathen Harvest :2006

What a welcome package!! The legend that is Robin Storey has just released what must be his fiftieth album ( 30 under the monicker of the legendary Zoviet France, and at least 20 as Rapoon).

Rapoon (for the uninitiated) is a legendary Dark Ambient project, pushing every release to boundaries
and inspiring almost any band you can think of.

"From Shadows Sleep" is a perfect example of ethereal wonder from the moment you get the packaging. Everything Such attention to detail is incredible.

These paintings are marked with the same kind of obscurity and abstractism that endear Rapoon to so many fans. Bleak and fading pieces of art, much like Picasso paintings - always hard to identify, but as soon as you listen to the music they become crystal clear.

Also interesting to note that every track begins with "The" - a Rapoon trademark.
Instantly, from the first second, this album astonishes. Sounds so pivotal and instrumental to the genre that one wonders how some people have never heard Rapoon!

The Ghostly feel to this masterpiece is echoed by the illuminative and deathly feel to the Paintings that come with it.
Ethno-Ambient isn't even close...there is a whole chorus of Spirits performing on this album, uncredited and hidden.

There is always an element of primeval and otherworldy echoes to Rapoon's music. Tracks like "The Pit Under The Castle"> devour all light and deliver wonderfully dulcet undertones, and the overall feel is the same kind of purity one could only get by staring at a Crystalline Empire bathed in the light of the Moon.

let us reference "The Fall of Babylon" - a gritty, hostile number, which can almost be a faint Vacuum sucking up life.
Part of the Brilliance here is that the tracks meet the stories that their titles hint at, and the paintings only further this notion, taking the listener into an entirely new train of focus.

There are so many tracks here that leave me with such an inspired outlook I just do not know how to describe them.
" The Endless Plains" is amazing. Lengthy, remorseless drones, metallic cries, and a general feeling of totally despondency.

Track of the album?? Has to be "The Cold Sun Rising". Distorted instruments (maybe Brass, maybe Horns), almost Satanic in their Witchery, perform a deeply unnerving cacophony before a few changes of pitch and tempo. Like looking at the entire world through a Bleeding Black Sky.

Musically, this automatically wins as a trademark and necessary album. With the entire package, this is a STRONG contender
for album of the year.

Anyone reading this review that doesn't want to hear this album is not a Dark Ambient fan.

Igloo Magazine Review:

Robin Storey has a long history of combining abstract art with his ethno-ambient music and, for his first release for Essense Music, he provides a number of postcards to accompany From Shadows Sleep. Trying to match the eleven cards to the eleven tracks gets you lost in the permutations between the washes of textured color on the prints and the ghostly ambience of the record.

During the early years following his stint in :zoviet*france:, his records were minimal to an extreme, distant hints of rhythm buried beneath slow washes of sound like the subsumed ghosts of forgotten cultures haunting the echoes of worn canyons and empty riverbeds. In the late '90s, Storey began to experiment with loops of language and the aggressive buzz of noise before venturing into realms of techno beats and tantric rhythms. From Shadows Sleep is a return to his roots, stripping away the beats and infinite loops and diving into dark and phantasmal territories. Storey even admits that some of the sounds on this record are recycled from previous releases, part of an effort on his part to rediscover old material with fresh techniques and older ears. Songs like "The Darkness of Ages" and "The Pit Under the Castle" hint at the ambience of Darker By Light and the grittier sound of The Fires of the Borderlands.

The "The Fall of Babylon" is filled with the rhythm of sandpaper, the persistent brush of grit as it eats away at the foundations of civilizations. Ethnic sounds decay in the distance, like shadows weeping, as the gritty noise of the sand -- the desert reclaiming that which has been taken from it -- buffs every sign of civilization away. "The Darkness of Time" sounds like a theater full of reel to reel tapes running backwards, unspooling old tapes of SETI signals. The tapes have been left in storage too long and their sounds are elongated and warped, stretched into lower registers by the gravitational persistence of time. Whalesong heard through a skein of metallic drones moan through "The Remembered Chill," as if the glacial movement of an ice age has surprised a pod of whales, trapped them in a slowly thickening sheaf of ice. In "The Cold Sun Rising," a chorus of brass and children -- their voices stretched into alien tones -- sing a hymn to the dawn, their throaty voices rising rise up into a hollow sky like a field of mutant sunflowers straining for the weak sun.

The colors on the postcards are muted, scabbed with dark tones. There is no structure as in his "Urban Mythology" series, no tans and reds as from his "Deserts" series. The cards with From Shadows Sleep are darker, filled with uncertain shapes beneath layers of scratched and inscribed paint. Both on the cards and in the music on From Shadows Sleep, you can see and hear Storey examining his history and scratching at the darker underbelly -- a focus that makes for an darkly arresting record.

Essence press release:

An unique masterwork of mysterious dark and droney sounds! Less rhythmic than previous efforts, From Shadows Sleep sees RAPOON visiting ancient temples, moving between shadowy labyrinths of meticulous drones, echoed tones and distant rumblings, building a hypnotic sonic ritual that brings traces from a distant past in form of atmospheric, spiritual mantras of a possessive power.

Ominous and bleak, yet wondrous, Robin Storey’s trance-inducing soundscapes swirls around majestic droning tape loops, patterns, ethnic samples (especially tablas) and other secret devices masterfully arranged to mesmerize the listener. There’s no light in here – you will be guided by RAPOON’s brooding and extremely detailed sonic imagery.

Some bits of these recordings were initially conceived during the urban riots of the Thatcher years in Great Britain and were wisely put to rest until now. As Mr. Storey says, "From Shadows Sleep refers to the fact that the music hibernates in shadows, unformed until it is heard as if in sleep and visits one aspect of the creative process in particular: the idea that a piece is never finished. Taking elements from old recordings and adding new material I have tried to re-visit old spaces with fresh ears and a contemporary take on old sounds. Rediscovering for myself an interaction with the sounds that are essentially lost after the creative process is 'finished'".

Robin Storey is a founding member and the real creative force behind the legendary, influential experimental collective :zoviet*france: and has been actively recording and performing for more than 25 years – since 1992 under the RAPOON banner –, always keeping an extraordinarily high quality control based in his very own trademark - the creation of mesmerizing ethnic based soundscapes.