Yes, but 100% WHAT, exactly?
November 11th, 2009 - Written by stevek—
The Slew: 100%
I do not understand exactly what The Slew is. Their (His? Hers? Its?) CD landed on my doorstep without any accompanying press sheet. I actually like mystery music—to an extent. For whatever it is, The Slew tested the limits of that extent.
On first and even second listening, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of ‘100%’. I wasn’t sure if I liked or disliked it. It had strange, 1970s R&B Funk and Acid Jazz pretensions, if not roots. Supposedly the origin of the ten tracks I listened to reach back to an obscure psychedelic band from the early-to-mid 1970s. If the tale is true, the long-lost master recordings of this band’s work were remixed and remastered into this release.
When I say listening to the Slew is a challenge, don’t misunderstand what I mean: there are highly infectious and repetitive grooves, sampling and dubbing, trippy changes and all kinds of messages, overt and secret alike.
The challenge after repeatedly playing this strangely addictive album comes from the fact that, despite strange similarities and haunting echoes of the last (and first) true Hipster Era of the Rock Age, The Slew’s ‘100%’ does NOT sound quite like anything else that I have heard before.
The trippy acoustics and Funk Psychedelic samples are wrapped around songs whose effectively simple messages hit home for their unprecedented clarity. “It’s All Over”, the second song on the album, accomplishes this with a master-stroke, by simply repeating the same chorus over and over again. But with the subtle shifts in the aural backing of each sequence cause that message to take on fresh meaning with every repetition.
Creeping Acid Rock and throbbing Funk dominate tracks like “You Turn Me Cold”, one of the best of the genre since Jimi Hendrix unleashed “Voodoo Chile” on the world in 1968.
Fans of Dubbing and Sampling will love the follow-up track, “Wrong Side of the Tracks”, a downright spooky offering that seems to be a granddaddy of Rap, Hip-Hop, House, Dance and Trance music. There’s Spoken Word Beat Poetry on this song, told with the kind of creepy rhythm and pacing that you might hear from Charles Manson at the San Quentin Talent Show. Again (and again and again) we have themes of repetition; of musical hooks, of certain effects, of lyrics. Again it is masterfully turned to perfect preternatural effect. This isn’t Hip-Hop, it’s Hypno-Hop, and it is indeed deserving of its own genre, its own category.
I could very easily write a paragraph’s worth of praise for almost every song on the album. The first track—like so many other lead tracks on so many good albums this year—I found completely out of phase with the rest of the playlist. That one aside, as always, leaves us with a perfect album.
If you’re wary of anything as potentially strange and new as The Slew, have I got a deal for you! The band would like you to download their album for free—as long as, if you like it, you support them by going to their show, buying merch or a special edition CD when you do. This is one time that when I beseech you to listen to them and judge for yourself you can actually do just that at no risk to you whatsoever! Beat THAT, Sham-Wow Guy!
Download The Slew’s ‘100%’ here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1qmkzzm0zjn
The Slew: 100%
Puget Sound Recordings
Steve’s Rating 11/10
Release: 11.24.09
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