LUKE SLATER (DJ & Producer)
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Quiet and focused, Slater delivers his speech in a careful, measured way,
he converses with the reserved confidence of an individual fully self
aware and in total control of his artistic direction. A true maverick
with a clear focus and an untouchable ability to get to places others
only dream of reaching. Turned onto music via early experiments with sounds
and noises via his dad's old reel-to-reel rather than than any affinity
to a particular musical sub culture, Lukes' apprenticeship differs to
those of his contemporaries whio talk of 1988 as Year Zero. He talks in
technological conundrums and of sound collages rather than a life affirming
experience down at Shoom (London). Of course the elctro
sound of "Street Sounds" and the clattering minimalism of early
Chicago and Detroit exports connected with Luke in the late Eighties,
but first and foremost, Slater came to these movements with a developed
musical mind. He didn't need converting - he was already hearing these
sounds in his fevered imagination.
The transition from dabbler to active participant was long in coming. By
late 1989, with his partner in crime Alan Sage, Luke set about
defining his vision on the fledgling label Jelly Jam, a label
offshoot from the Brighton record shop of the same name where Luke was working
at the time. A batch of Detroit-influenced tracks were spat out an alarming
rate, a deal with D-Jax Records was struck which saw Slater
apodting the guise of Clementine, but it wasn't until his
linkup with Peacefrog Records and another change of moniker
to Planetary Assault Systems that Luke Slaters' name became
widely known and praised. Yet Lukes' furious output soon started to take
its' toll: "I began to relaise you can't do everything, I was beginning
to lose focus on what I originally intende to do in the first place".
Critics an publice alike began to hail Luke as the natural British inheritor
of the Detroit sound with his textured, layered techno odysseys. Yet Lukes'
talent stretched way beyond mimicry, "If you want to achive something,
you can't just sit around and rest on a style you've already mastered, you'd
just end up going round in circles, getting nowhere. You've got to keep
on looking." So after a furious few years of studio work and an equally
strenuous DJ schedukle Luke has been at the forefront of British techno
DJing since the late Eighties, he has decided to slow down and regain his
focus on the sites of his ultimate vision.
Drawing on his prison-thickness rollup, he leans back on his chair and declares,
"There's a lot more I want to do musically. I know I can do it, but
it's just a case of getting there". Taking time out and concentrating
on his own desires rather than doing the expected and pumping out a barrage
of dancefloor friendly techno blasters, Luke Slater has joined up with Novamute
to produce a highly accomplished and highly variable album "Freek
Funk", recorded in his home studio in Crawley. "It's defintely
different", pines the satisfied Slater, "I feel it's real advancement
in the right areas. I didn't want to make another techno album. But it's
still a musical stop off on the way to somewhere else". Heaven knows
where Luke will end up but for the time being this album is a landmark.
Breathtaking, scary, moving, funky; it's a techno album that's not techno,
disco album thats not disco, an industrial album that's not industrial,
there is no way to pin down Luke Slater's Novamute debut.
Swinging violently from nonconformist techno assaults to statuesque moments
of grandeur, to funk driven rare groove workouts, the album breaks techno
down to its composite parts and then stretches them to their limits.
Opening with the funk-driven "Purely", we are then
transported to "Score One", a darkly futuristic
soundscape which melts into "Origin" and "Score
Two", a bubbling mass of weird sounds and deep beats. The trip
continues throughout the album with warped relatives "Scores
Three and Four", popping up intermittently throughout proceedings
with the stealth of a John Carpenter Score. Electro gets a nod with"Are
you There", with it's rich string arrangements and soothing
waves of bell chimes this is a "Tour De France" for the 1990's.
"Bless Bless" is a different creature altogether,
a spacedusted silver surfers' anthem. And onwards to "Time Dancer",
where Jmase Brown meets Liz Frazer on a car production line - ethereal industrial
funk if you like. And not to forget the stellar beauty of "Love"
that ranks alongside UR's "Amazon" as a track to break hearts
at 40 beats and the otherworldly madness of "Walking the Line",
a jazz odyssey that conjures forth the Saturnalian spirit of Sun Ra.
Schizophrenic and rampagingly original, Luke Slater has achieved what so
many aspire to, a unique and accessible album that pushes the musical envelope
further than anyone else. With plans to further his transformative powers
into song structures and a muted plan to take a full band out live, Luke
Slater is not content ot merely stay ahead of the incessant marching beat
of the dance rhythm. This album owes as much to musical mavericks as Brian
Wilson owes to the industrial grind of Detroit, to the groundbreaking strides
left by Kraftwerk & Steve Reich. |
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