Slaapwel Records

Slaapwel Records is a small record label specialized in music to fall asleep to.

Wim Maesschalck aka Wixel, who started the label, often found himself lying awake in bed, not sleepy enough to fall asleep, not lively enough to keep doing stuff. He figured it would be good if there was more music that soundtracks the thin border between being asleep and lying awake, deliberately choosing the sleepy side of things. So he set out, looking for people that would be good at making mind-soothing songs.

He asked them to write a sleep-inducing record, he listened to it, and when he failed to reach the end because he fell asleep, he released it as a musical record. All artists are various people he met through the years, different yet all connected with their unique talent, yet all very good at making „boring“ music. This is not an insult.

„I love their music to death and I think they are all very capable of making wonderful sleep-inducing songs. In any case, don't make too much of it. It is all just good fun. Sleepy fun.“

And that is still the philosophy of Slaapwel Records today. Stijn Hüwels has been curating the label since 2014. So far, Slaapwel released albums by Steinbrüchel, Wouter van Veldhoven, Machinefabriek & Soccer Committee, Simon Scott, Greg Haines, Peter Broderick, Ciro Berenguer, Ghost and Tape, Kreng + Svarte Greiner, Gareth Davis, Danny Clay, Sonmi 451, Seaworthy, Johan G. Winther, Jasper Tx and The Boats.

Stijn Hüwels

Stijn Hüwels is a musician with a profound fascination for minimalism. He's using mainly layers of processed guitar and field recordings. He released on Dauw, mAtter, Eilean Rec., Home Normal, Genot Centre, White Paddy Mountain, Slowcraft/Lifelines, Laaps and Vaagner. He collaborated with Pieter Dudal, Chihei Hatakeyama, Norihito Suda, Tomoyoshi Date, Michel Banabila, An Moku, Ian Hawgood and Jens Pauly. Together with James Murray he forms Silent Vigils. Stijn lives and works in Leuven and Brussels, Belgium. He's also been curating Slaapwel Records since 2014, a label dedicated to music to fall asleep with.

Katharina Schmidt

Katharina Schmidt is a musician based in Berlin. After years of playing drums and piano in various bands, her solo work is influenced by indie, experimental, and improvised music. Exploring interests in storytelling, sonic topographies, and generative techniques, her music uses electronics, field recordings, and self-built interfaces alongside acoustic instruments. From sonifications to lullabies, her work is poised between formal experimentation and narratives cued by literature and pop culture, and can be heard in installations, film music, and radiophonic pieces, as well as releases on labels such as Enmossed, Flag Day Recordings, and Slaapwel Records.

Ciro Berenguer

Ciro Berenguer is a guitarist and a composer from Argentina who has lived for a long time in Barcelona. He both likes traditional and nontraditional ways of playing the guitar and creating with it, many evolving sound layers: using it with many electronic devices or just the guitar alone. Two facets expressed in a small bunch of albums for European labels such as Dauw, Eilean and Slaapwel. A diverse musical journey, from standard guitar music to a more experimental and improvised way of doing sound-art and enjoying both paths.