Here’s my third digital album review, coming from a friend of mine who lives in the East Coast (Jacksonville, Florida). His name is Sam Shadow, but his artist name is SLOUGH (stylized as ☥__SLØUGH__☥). Sam first started making industrial and dark ambient music, later moving on to Vaporwave and Plunderphonics music. His most recent release, 2015’s Jennifer’s Nightmare, continues the artist’s typical Plunderphonics style, but it is slightly less Vaporwave, being focused more on industrial-sounding Cyberpunk-style music. The album consists almost entirely of samples, with the only original instrumentation coming from Sam’s keyboard playing. The album is ridiculously short, containing only 6 tracks and clocking in at around 11 minutes. This album is fun to listen to, and is great for those who like Plunderphonics music.
Here are the tracks, in order:
“Computer Duster Punk”-This consists of a sampled heavy metal-sounding punk jam backed by electronic sound effects, such as that of telephone beeps. This reminds me of Motörhead, but with a more experimental sound.
“Interzone Junk Addict”-This track consists of chopped-up and looped voice samples, backed by bubbly synthesizer effects. This ends with mechanical electric noises followed by a Southern-style voice sample.
“Immigrant Dog”-Starting with an early Negativland-style collage with warping electronic noises and a French guy speaking, it all leads to Led Zeppelin recordings getting cut into tiny little pieces and glued together, a lot like John Oswald’s works. I also hear what appears to be choir-like vocals in the background.
“Unrest in Peking 1997”-This piece consists of samples of the theme song from the dystopian novelty video game Hong Kong 97 that gets chopped-up and sped-up. This is the only piece on the album that would be considered Vaporwave, simply because of the samples used. It ends with the samples exploding and increasing heavily in atmospherics and delay, like John Oswald’s Michael Jackson-based sound collage “Dab”.
“Straw Boss”-This has a chopped-up punk rock jam that lasts for only 50 seconds, making it the shortest track on the album.
“Jennifer’s Nightmare”-The closing title track begins with a sample of a girl’s voice, followed by various ambient sound effects and ominous, horror movie-style grand piano. Later, you hear bubbly synthesizer, and in a few parts, you hear the piano warping a little bit. The track ends with samples of what sounds like an investigation on dead bodies.
You can find this album on SoundCloud and Bandcamp really easily. This album is filled with a ton of strange and rather interesting influences, all chopped-up and re-arranged into a jagged collage that is campy, edgy, and futuristic all at the same time. it is a great album, and I suggest you go to ☥__SLØUGH__☥’s SoundCloud or Bandcamp, listen to it, and have fun. Hopefully, Sam can do similar stuff like this in the future.
The Crazy Mind of Tré Roland 