“You Have Cured a Million Ghosts From Roaming in My Head” by Aarktica

This year is the 25th anniversary of one of my all-time favorite “drone” albums, Aarktica’s No Solace in Sleep. Recorded shortly after Jon DeRosa became afflicted with hearing loss and auditory hallucinations, Aarktica’s debut is a harrowing yet stirring album of glacier-sized guitar drones, icy feedback and distortion, and ghostly effects and melodies, particularly on songs like “The Ice (Feels Three Feet Thick Between Us)” and “I Remember Life Above the Surface.”

As I wrote in my 2002 review, No Solace in Sleep is “a fascinating, sometimes beautiful, sometimes frighteningly intense world of sound.” One that, by the way, certainly belies its lo-fi origins. (DeRosa recorded the album on a 4-track cassette recorder in his college dorm room.)

At just under four minutes, “You Have Cured a Million Ghosts From Roaming in My Head” is the album’s shortest song, but it’s no less captivating as DeRosa weaves together snowflake-delicate layers of guitar in a manner that evokes Cocteau Twins’ landmark Victorialand album.

To mark the album’s anniversary, Projekt Records — which previously released Aarktica’s excellent 2023 album, Paeans — is releasing a remastered edition of No Solace in Sleep that’s now available as a digital download. DeRosa has also launched a $6,000 Kickstarter campaign to fund the release of No Solace in Sleep as a limited edition CD and double LP.

No Solace in Sleep’s 2025 remaster will be officially released on May 23, 2025 by Projekt Records but it’s currently available as a “name your price” release.