While Glasgow tech-house veterans Slam left a gap of seven years between releasing albums last time around, thankfully this time longtime fans haven’t had to wait quite as long for new music. Indeed, this sixth album ‘Machine Cut Noise’ emerges just two years after their preceding ‘Reverse Proceed’ collection. As its title suggests, ‘Machine Cut Noise’ offers up what’s perhaps the duo’s darkest and most widescreen-sounding collection to date, whilst also exploring more stripped down and distinctly mechanistic atmospheres – the ominous cover art depicting an altar and the distinctly ritualistic track titles providing an element of foreshadowing here.
While opening track ‘Inaguration’ offers up an eerie intro section that sees brittle cycling polyrhythms rolling against a lush backdrop of ominous droning ambience, the delay-treated rhythmic accents rippling out through the mix, it isn’t too long before the precision machine pulse that powers much of this collection slides into focus. ‘Viginti Quinque’ sees shuffling percussion fills clinging tightly to a backbone of chunky 4/4 kickdrums as brooding synth drones rise into the foreground, the ghostly swirling harmonic layers adding an unsettling edge to the streamlined techno rhythms powering away below.
If the aforementioned track induces a sense of rattling through the darkness at headlong speed, ‘Ecclesiastic’ sees the mechanistic grooves getting deeper and even more fluid as arpeggiated bass sequences add an Italo-house edge to the EBM-centred rhythms, the surging electronics building towards a distorted redline as ghostly ambient textures trail between the speakers. It’s dark airless stuff without so much as a hint of vocals or indeed any hint of a human presence. If anything, the predominant touchstone here appears to relentless New Beat-tinged machine music along the lines of Westbam, Terence Fixmer and Nitzer Ebb, the menacing hammer-kick groove of ‘Evite’ providing what’s easily one of the most spectacular collisions of dark energy and flexing techno muscle on offer here. All up, ‘Machine Cut Noise’ offers up a dark, intoxicating and remarkable cohesive listening experience that easily stands up there with Slam’s strongest material.
