
Slow Dress – Back Into My Body
It’s fascinating how musical trends age. It’s just as amazing how good ideas seemingly do not. Back in 1996 Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand by Primitive Radio Gods was viewed as an example of cutting-edge cut and paste songwriting. It included a BB King sample, electronica grooves, and the confessional vocals that sounded as if the radio station dial had gotten stuck between channels.
It’s no doubt a great song though, one that can be thoroughly enjoyed today. As for the promise of musical evolution, the basic postulates of that production have been served up in different recipes in the mainstream, or underground since then.
Back into my body by Slow Dress reminds me of that song. And, just like it, while the production ideas are now something of a standard industry teaching, the execution remains brilliant. The vocal introspection is gorgeous and sounds like music found by accident by a producer determined to add dreamy, morning-phase electronica flourishes.
It’s perpetual musical melancholy, never reaching a conclusion and inviting you to play it back repeatedly.
Sin of Saints – Hangman
In a recent interview with Thelonious Monster’s Bob Forrest, the singer outlined one of the main issues that record labels have always had in regards to the artists that they sign. They tend to want to lend their support to clones of whatever musical trend is popular at the time. A better solution, Mr Forrest believes, would be to give interesting, creative people the opportunity to make art and allow for “fortunate accidents” to occur.
Judging by the sound of the first singles by Sin of Saints, the project fulfils these criteria. There’s certainly something interesting happening here, even if the production value doesn’t reveal it as easily as it could.
Furthermore, the work sounds determined, but mysterious, like somebody performing some sort of strange magic out in the woods by themselves. There’s little information to go about. The music and aesthetic are certainly ominous and, clearly, the artist’s vision is in the process of becoming clearer.
Hangman by Sin of Saints is a mixture of blues, voodoo healing singing, and sound effects. There’s plenty of potential here, and once the production gets revved up, the results could be downright terrifying.