“Duncan Fleming is a genius of a songwriter walking a razor sharp tightrope between deranged humour and classic pop music. War Against Sleep is his ongoing battle against the absurd waking dream that passes for life, in which he plunders the hidden treasures of a thousand charity shop records, writing songs that tingle the spine, move the soul and lift the spirit.”
“Sexy psychedelia” NME
“Gloriously ridiculous stuff” The Wire
“Classic songwriting” Record Collector
“He performs complete wonders” The Big Issue
“War Against Sleep are the audio version of the programmes that used to scare me witless as a child” Rough Trade
“What is the War Against Sleep? The Casio-psychosis of a moral dyslexic squeezing out songs like glue to hold himself together. The act of picking cigarette ends off the floor because you like the taste of cheap lipstick. Love crafted from a night in with Teletext and Benylin. A suit, stained with the amphetamine sweat-beads of your worst porno nightmare. A stolen suit, a borrowed suit, a dead man’s suit, a dead-skin mask. Dance with me, you syphilitic tramp. I love you. A silk cravat, a painted rope. Hysterical, literate, blackened by the sun. Pop svengalis pissing blood into bronze buckets. The very idea of a Masterpiece. Ancient orders, first religions, Old Gods. Tascam Porta-7. Sex for small change. Thrillingly lo-fi, absurdly ambitious. Man as blind abacus. Man as performer; touched by the hand of Thoth. Man versus the world; woman as insect. An enormous insect that you want to be eaten by. Eat me: keep me warm. Keep dancing. Did I tell you to stop dancing? Locked in the cellar: We have always been here. Bontempi nights: the moon is in control. Pulling to the sea pulling violently like a green disease from within ever-living divine but violated, blind more to come tonight. In the War Against Sleep winning is not even the issue. It’s the cheating that counts. Now dance, damn you. Dance until you are on fire” Nick Talbot