SLOW DANCE RECORDS DID IT AGAIN.
Founded in 2016, Slow Dance Records stands at the forefront of the alternative music scene – exploring the corners of the UK underground, you’re likely to encounter their name quite regularly. With their annual compilations acting as crystal balls into the most exciting releases of the forthcoming year (previously featuring Khazali, otta, and members from Goat Girl, Black Midi and more), Slow Dance have established themselves as unquestioned and reliable tastemakers across electronica and beyond, curating events at their Slow Space and alongside The Alternative Escape, not to mention collaborating with Wide Awake festival.
This year’s compilation, Slow Dance ’20, is a 16-track album, where each song will make you ask: why haven’t I heard this artist before and where can I hear more?
Releasing one track per day throughout January, Slow Dance had their audience on tenterhooks, jumping effortlessly from lo-fi ambient beats to pounding techno on a daily basis. Naturally, we had to find out more. Speaking to two of the label’s core members, GG Skips & Maddy O’ Keefe (Darius Williams is also a key player), we learnt more about the label’s cross-medial DIY foundations, its genre-bending ethos and how they just keep getting it right.
All photos by Ella Harris & Kit Whalley Payne
LB: How and why did Slow Dance come together?
SD: Slow Dance came together in the typical way a collective assembles, through our shared interest in showcasing creativity. It started as a cultural and arts zine and then we started throwing parties in all sorts of spaces for young people to perform, hang out and share stories. We threw parties in lofts, on boats, in warehouses and shabby basements around London. Releasing the music from those performing at the parties came naturally, and we gradually became a label. We still work in a semi-spontaneous way, in that we’re not looking for anything specific to release or take on, we pick things up as we go. We’ve run radio stations, artist merch collabs and started a venue before lockdown. Next stop, we’re hoping, is a midnight movie club, whenever it’s possible.
When starting off, were there any specific ideas you had surrounding how the label would materialize or what genre you’d focus on?
We started as a mainly club and DJ unit, but we were in and around the ‘post punk revival’ so we had bands play events. Naturally these two blended, so we work with a lot of electronic musicians who have the energy of post punk, bands like PVA, Saint Jude, Glows. We also do a lot of folk, so we are a sort of club/folk mishmash but I suppose that means we don’t actually confine our genre to anything specifically. What has remained semi-consistent is our focus on individual voices and projects, we like the purity of vision that comes from solo artists and producers.
Has this idea changed since?
Yes. We signed our first band Roscoe Roscoe, who are a great psych band. We also work with comfort, a Glasgow based duo who make hip-hop inspired industrial protest pop. Things feel right, sometimes we open demos on our email and it just clicks. We’re clearly in a post-postmodern time, so that's often reflected in the assemblages of genres that artists bring together.
Starting off the compilation, Manchester-based artist Sonny Bliss creates an experience akin to the hype music you hear before a live gig. With an emphasis on spontaneity and improvisation, the punchy saxophone and electric beats of Skin Contact get you riled up for what’s to come. From the danceable breaks of artist and activist Aphty Khéa and A. Blubox with Pengvibe2.0 (a personal favourite) to the hard-hitting statements on maximum wage from Glasgow-based protest-pop duo comfort, Slow Dance’s repertoire reaches far beyond your typical label. Whilst traces of post-punk float through the album with Folly Group’s Fashionista, and of course the tumultuous 10-minute long Heath by Butch Kassidy bringing the album to a close, it’s quite remarkable to hear an album which is essentially created from 16 different ways of making music yet flows together so perfectly.
How did you curate Slow Dance ’20 and what would be one sentence to describe it?
We each picked various artists who we were keen on from the past year - ones who are unsigned and haven’t released anything yet, some who we plan on working with in the future or already collaborate with on some capacity, and a few reached out to us. There’s so much good new stuff out there and we’re really lucky to be able to curate the compilations, with so many financial and time constraints working on full release campaigns we can’t commit to all the artists we’d like to be able to. In one sentence: we couldn’t describe something this broad in one sentence!
How do you come across an artist you want to sign?
Usually through live shows, word of mouth recommendations from other artists. Lots of our artists have a strong focus on collaboration, so many come into the fold through random friends of friends. This year we set up a radio station during lockdown and asked people to send mixes and projects. We found lots of stuff through that, it was a great way to keep the community alive during the pandemic.
Maddy, Marco & Darius
Launched way back in April, Slow Dance launched their lockdown radio station The Quarantine Era, featuring guest shows from the likes of Jessica Winter and Squid amongst many others. This was a key way for the label to discover new artists, filling the hole of live music that was missed over summer. And boy, did it work – just listen to the celestial landscapes of Julia-Sophie and the raw production of Alex Loveless if you don’t believe us. Before lockdown, Slow Dance established themselves as key players in London’s live music scene – hosting diverse nights around the city, the artists on this compilation perfectly reflect this spirit. Let us point you to YAANG, whose unique audiovisual shows at house parties eventually got picked up by New Order and Kraftwerk, and Bunny Hoova, who previously played at the label’s venue Slow Space in East London. This year’s compilation is another iteration of SD’s constant eclecticism which reaches further than just the realm of music.
You’ve delved into the worlds of events, radio and tees, not to mention collaborations with Late Works on the fantastic Of Noise series. Why is this emphasis on overlapping forms of creativity so vital in your opinion?
We’re all interested in other art forms, Darius works in film and Marco is a graphic designer, many of the musicians we work with are also writers, filmmakers, painters. I think creative forms naturally overlap and we love collaborating / the communal experience of things like live music and radio.
Examples of this collaborative spirit populate Slow Dance ’20 – Lui’s warming Nothing Left to Say features production from Glows (aka GG Skips, the label’s founder) who also regularly plays with EMU, a rotating collective of musicians whose Waiting Room (Excerpt) encapsulates you in an electrifying ambience, topped with the ethereal whispers of group regular Martha Skye Murphy. The record also features label favourites Platonica Erotica, self-described as the ‘Greek god of singing karaoke to your crush (in your imagination). Nothing more to say on that one really.
What makes Slow Dance different from other labels?
Maybe our age, it’s nice working with artists when you are in the same age range, there’s a closeness. We also have a nice community of labels doing similar things like Untitled, Sad Club, Ra Ra Rock and Spinny Nights. I wouldn't say we make a point to be different to other labels but we started as an arts collective, not really setting out to be a label from the start. None of us really had any experience of the music industry before we started. We try to be as inclusive as possible, and to do as many different things through different mediums as possible.
Experimentation runs through SD’s veins, and if the album hasn't already made this evident enough, you just have to look at the descriptions for each artist over on their website (where everything aforementioned is up for sale hint hint). The level of complex DIY and quirky production techniques are ridiculously intriguing, adding yet another level of nuance to this album which, to put it simply – does the most. Whilst Crimewave are determined to resist the temptation of synthesizers and devote themselves to their digitally manipulated physical instruments, Heka’s Redwoods and HALINA’s Filling The Void blend the two into an entanglement of un/organic folds creating textured collages of atmospheric soundscapes.
Are there any artists you want to shout-out/recommend that we should be listening to right now?Nuha Ruby Ra is awesome, Robbie & Mona and Terror Peaks for new artists, and Goat Girl’s new album ‘On All Fours’ is something you should definitely listen to if you haven’t already. Our compilation albums are basically a big selection of artists we’d like to recommend also, all of them are ones we’re excited about whether they’re releasing more with us or not.
The Slow Dance compilations often feature side projects from artists (previously including members of Goat Girl, Jockstrap, Sorry and more), and no collaboration was better suited to sum up the label’s slogan ‘for dancing’ than the penultimate track by ZZ Bop – aka PVA’s Ella Harris and Blue Bendy’s Olivia Morgan. Created in lockdown, the pulsating bass of this heavy techno makes us all wish we were back on our sweaty dancefloor of choice. In the meantime, crack this one on and it’ll ease the pain.
What do you listen to on the Last Bus home?
Marco (GG Skips) - Russ Garcia and his Vocal Choir or Songs:Ohia - Didn’t It Rain
Maddy - Anything by Jon Hassell, maybe ‘Seeing Through Sound’ or ‘Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street’
Slow Dance ’20 is a truly transcendent album that will elevate you from the confines of your bedroom walls to the highest point of the walls of sound each artist idiosyncratically constructs.
With that, all there’s left to do is listen here.