Some bands are obscure because they don’t receive a great deal of exposure, others because their music is extremely niche, and other still because they seem determined to make their music inaccessible. All three scenarios apply to Slow Listener, the musical vehicle of Robin Dickinson. Exotic Pylon Records are issuing ‘The Long Rain’ as a download and cassette only. It’s also extremely odd. And when the press release states, in no uncertain terms ‘it’s really fucking strange’, you know it’s going to be pretty far out – and make no mistake, it is.
Vocal samples, delayed, disembodied, looped and muddy echo around amidst sonorous scraping drones and eerie hums that conglomerate in tonal dissonance that sets your teeth on edge. The two tracks – ‘And Nor Was He Mistaken’ and ‘Ondras Rising’ – that form ‘The Long Rain’ each stretch to around the 23-minute mark, and each precipitate feelings of ill-ease. It’s disquieting, unsettling. Off the wall doesn’t come close. It’s music from another realm. It scrapes the listener’s skull cavity and shakes the brain around a little. It prods and pokes and needles the senses. It’s ambient, but not as we know it…
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Slow Listener Online
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