An alchemical mash up of personal aesthetics, styles, experiences and backgrounds weave their way through the first volume in a series offered by Slam as a collaboration effort to connect with artists on a meaningful creative level in a Covid-19 world.
Let’s stop for a moment and appreciate all the good things that the gentlemen from Glasgow, Slam have brought us… [staring off into the distance with arm over your shoulder] done?
Ok, let’s review.
I’ve never heard Slam releasing any sort of track that was in any way mediocre. Then to go and start a label with Soma that launched a thousand careers, and then innovating and maintaining a solid lead on their sound over the years, and finally having a long-standing dj podcast that just fails to suck when so many other long term podcasts, let’s face it, have buried themselves… it’s a safe bet that Slam knows what techno is, how to make it, and how to move the entire techno scene forward. By the looks of things they are not getting tired.
With this new five-part collaboration series, Slam are really putting together a “who’s who” of techno names and also reminding you of some heads that you are familiar with but also some you may need to be reacquainted with, S/A Hector Oaks, 999999999, Keith Tucker (AKA Optic Nerve), Amelie Lens, Rebekah, AnD And Perc. The concept being, to create a sort of long distance digital collaboration to take the place of the lack of events in the wake of Covid, since the project started in March 2020. It was seen by them mostly as a way to still have fun and create meaningful connections in the techno world, and possibly retain some sense of sanity in lockdown. Slam describe the project as:
“a collaborative project with friends, colleagues and contemporaries normally only seen at airports, or events, now brought together under a completely different set of circumstances, allowing for a purposeful connection in a time of disconnect.”
By the looks of things, the series has plotted itself to be on track with Europe’s reopening. As a reward and as the rest of the world is waking up, we get this series. If Covid was good for anything, it served as a way for people to incubate ideas, which we have seen many times in the music coming out this spring and summer.
First offering in Volume 1 in this series has Slam & 999999999 working together on a track called “Conveyer” If you’ve at all heard the Italian duo, 999999999 (Nine Times Nine)’s music, you know they don’t mess around. Their sound has a consistent intensity to it. Where exactly Slam comes in with this collab is unclear since a lot of the sounds in this track seem like 999999999’s bread and butter. Distorted kicks, pushed timing and absolutely relentlessly fast synth lines, driven sample hits, and drum elements. Possibly if you’re paying attention, Slam is at play in the formatting of the track and coaxing each part into new sections. The track itself is a wild new direction for Slam who usually keep it groovy, so the exposure to 999999999’s methods seems like they are holding back a bit by not reworking the track to the Slam style. Instead, Slam is offering the track as kind of a bit of reverence for one of the leading groups in the faster paced 2021 techno scene.
Next Slam collab here is with underground hero Héctor Oaks on “Pathfinder” Héctor Oaks, who’s been having a bang up year after releasing his album Año V-1 on Tresor early this year, and has a style that can be sometimes flat, pressurized, distorted and funky; a combination of ideas that’s unique in the techno world. His asphyxiation style intensity matched with what I’m imagining are Slam’s big and sweeping lines that provide a great release to Héctor Oaks’ built-in intensity. The combination of both styles compliment each other extremely well here, creating a great, classic techno style. Fist in the air for this minor anthem.
Last on this three tracker we see Slam and Optic Nerve with the track “Machine Conflict”
Optic Nerve is a not often used alias for Keith Tucker who goes without saying is a Detroit techno and electro legend with Aux 88, and the label Direct Beat. The latest time Tucker used this alias was a February release on Soma of some serious legit Detroit techno soul vibes. Slam are no strangers to the concepts within classic Detroit techno and the combination of Slam and Optic Nerve here make for some serious audio candy. There’s a lot to take in and the track, while holding onto a lot of alternate concepts musically and harmonically, somehow seems to still work without imploding. It’s difficult to traverse the track without your attention being pulled all over the place, and finally after wading into it for awhile you just succumb to it and the result is sort of dissociative submission and letting the sounds wash over you. Which in of itself makes the track extremely intense in a psychological way. The weirdest bit is that the whole track is deeply informed by this Detroit aesthetic. Imagine if you will, some of the most out there Psytrance, applying the aspects of Detroit techno to it and you might have this. It’s kind of bizarre and futuristic. Mandala cross patterned Joe Louis fist out for this one.
Now that the first volume in the “Louder Than Chaos” series is well underway.. We have to wait to see how the rest of these play out. It’s been really fun listening for Slam’s voice in this, and getting to see how the artists they have collaborated with make themselves heard. In a lot of ways this series is unique because it’s like Slam is becoming a new band with each collab. Each new person or persons in contact with their aesthetic definitely comes up with something new. The same can be said for the artists that take on Slam into their world. New and entirely different ideas can be created with just a little salt and pepper of varied experiences and backgrounds. The result is something that hasn’t really been done before in techno, and presents artists stylistically as remix fodder for each other. Super interesting concept and there should be a lot of great ideas that are rendered from this series.
-Sean Ocean
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