Slug - Lose Your Shell [Nexus Media]

[Guest Le Lotus Bleu]

Slug – Lose Your Shell [Nexus Media]

 

Tracklist :

 

1. Paradise Lost 145 bpm

2. Russian Salad 146

3. Lose Your Shell 145

4. Front & Left 144

5. Paratrak 144

6. On The Floor 145

7. Xbox 143

8. The Witch 144

9. Lo Rider 142

 

Lose Your Shell is the debut album from Slug (Liam Gibbs from Cape Town – South Africa), all tracks are written by Slub except track 6 done by Slug + Shift (Chris Hoy) & it was mastered by Artifakt (M. De Nobrega).

 

1. Beginning with a sample loop of an electric guitar riff, i didn’t feel amazed at first with Slug’s sound. Even though the loop comes back several times (maybe too much, the global aspect results puffing) all along this tune, hopefully other ingredients compose Paradise Lost like a nice long floating & trembling break from 4’00 to 5’00, huge twisted effects on piano or brassy tone & concerning the rythmic you’ve got a fat kick coppled with satured hithat. So now you know, Slug is into heavy boisterous psytrance.

 

2. The Russian Salad is a course made of a ping pong ball (for the rythmic trick, remember Quirk with Ping). You also need to cook gently in a frying pan your groovy bassline sauce upto 1’00 , don’t switch immediatly to a brisker mode as you got to obtain the funky taste around 1’25,so just slighty raise the power of fire & maintain the temprature. Meanwhile cut slices of spicy & acidulous fruits range as leads components of the salad, don’t hesitate to multi-layered them. When the 3 steps ready , gather the ingredients inside the mixer & pulse the mixture upto 6’48 exactly it’s very important in order to get the alchemy of the contrast correctly revealed. Then it just remains you to taste the receipe, it’s not recommended to add extra condiment like dioxine for enhancing the flavor.

 

3. Opening situation with aquatic breathes between seaweed, you start your exploration of dephts for an attempt in recovering your shell in the middle of happy-go-lucky plankton. At 2’45 you cross an deafening seahorses’s race constrating with the obscur world of silence in the ocean deeps from 3’45 upto 4’40 where no signs of life seem to be foundable except ships which sank. As a human being & still not a fish, several heel’s kick are needed to get back to the surface. It’s a long way back, very long, you hold up your head in order to see again some light, it’s a race against time through a cycling up ascension starting at 5’15. 6’36 you’re getting into the last meters from the surface for your noisy emersion.

 

4. By many aspects Front And Left reminds me Twisted System’s tunes excepting the rolling bassline and the very animated cybergun battle after 3’15, let just say the result is a bit less personnal & creative but still nice & effective in a heavy style.

 

5. Slug keep going here with more nervous production. I’ve noticed unpolished sounds , probably they’re controlled by Slub & integral part of the production conferring Paratrak a more experimental touch like Promotheus Process with Clarity From Deep Fog, it’s also possible some dudes will say that the mastering is weak here or too noisy. So definitivly it’s not a track for everyone.

 

6. A nebulous atmosphere resides in On The Floor, name of a recently castle-manor isolated in Scotland, bought jointly by Slug & Shift. There’s a big hostile fauna established in this previously longly abanbonned place : can be met outhere bats (after 1’40), ghosts (after 2’06). Furthermore invisible icy bells rings frequently at anytime & resonnating all over (starting from 3’25). Strange phenomenons can occur like a griding door that get opened by itself or secret crossings through walls get revealed without activating anything (5’10 to 5’38). After some intense investigations Shift noticed the wooden staircaises was trapped with several collapsing steps (6’43,6’56,7’10, 7’17). A real little cosy neast.

 

 

 

7. Todays is Saturday, in a good mood you decide to make a visit to your familly located at 500 kilometers from your home. Let’s go for a bit of car driving up there. Unluckily, you didn’t foresee the bad meteorolgical conditions : fog plus rain. As a result your old windscreen wiper need to be activated after just few kilometers (0’34), you totally forget to replace them as you couldn’t support anymore their awful squeaning sound. But it’s too late, once again you had to bear them. Seems it’s a real bad day for driving today, the rain come on worse than ever. Time to switch on your back windscreen wiper, shit you also forgot to change it coz of its whiping SM noise (1’30 to 2’15). Hey cool, there’s a little lull, you can perceive some sunbeams transfixing the grey & black clouds (2’35 to 3‘00). Nevertheless the rain didn’t stop completly, you must be very careful in order not to make aquaplaning on a soak road ; your tyres skid a bit & are slightly grinding (3’00 to 3’40 ). Meanwhile you’re still fighting against the elements, undergoing a violent acid rain , you realize you already did over half of the way (3’55 to 4’50). Hum, what’s that ? you don’t see anything unless 2 meeters, you’re in the middle of a smog. You don’t seem to drive your car but make it float through a cloud (4’50 to 5’30 ). The last kilometers are particularly testing, you’re approaching your final destination safe & sound rewarded by a …succulent meal made of cauliflower , Jerusalem artichoke & chicken cooked by your mother-in-law. Next Saturday, you already know that you’ll stay at home playing with your X Box.

 

 

 

8. The Witch is about lighter sounds married with groovier bassline. In search of new fresh salsaparilla plants for cooking your last invented potion , you mout your flying broom across muggy weather areas. When you finally find your salsaparilla, just after gather them, you pronounce a small incantation for preserving them the most possible (after 3’00). No superflue time on the cultivated ground, witches aren’t welcome. You immediatly come back to your den upon your staunch flying broom.

 

9. Lo Rider is a nice happy mischievous track with twisted piano or brassy melodies & aerial background synths, quite different from the rest of the album. Weird break sample at 3’15 , i didn’t catch all the words ‘everyone applause…it’s impossible to catch the penguin…’ probably a little wink to the first Nexus Media release called Penguin Rebellion.

 

 

 

Main regret about the barking lead kinda trademark from Timecode/Nexus Media, that is nearly employed in every track but with more or less intensity.

Nevertheless there’s plenty new fresh sounds used in this album & that’s the most relevant.

 

Highlights :2,3,9

Then :6,7,8

 

8/10

[yerg]

First album of Slug is a great representation of his banging funky full-on sound. It seems more original than most full-on these days. And of course it gets repetitive by the end - so recommended to listen in small doses.

 

Favourites: Paradise Lost, Russian Salad, Lose Your Shell and On The Floor.

[LLB]

First album of Slug is a great representation of his banging funky full-on sound. It seems more original than most full-on these days. And of course it gets repetitive by the end - so recommended to listen in small doses.

 

Favourites: Paradise Lost, Russian Salad, Lose Your Shell and On The Floor.

I agree Slug is probably the most under estimated South African atist we've got whereas he's got without doubt at the same time the SA trademarks & an apart soundscape hitting radically with his colleagues.

[Trance2MoveU]

12 years ago when this was released it might have been on the cutting edge of South African psytrance.  The edgy, dark melodic stuff that Nexus Media and Timecode were known for.  But now, it seems a little shallow.  Other artists have picked up the baton and run further and faster.  Still, tracks like Front and Left, Paratrak, and the Chris Hoy written On the Floor have that brooding edge he's capable of.