The Slow Down is Japan Review's follow up to their debut album Kvetch Sounds, as they become the second Glaswegian band, I've reviewed in 2024, Japan Review are a duo of Genna Foden and Adam O'Sullivan.
This opens with No Listening that takes a drum machine beat with gauzy, almost in a closet vocal, to slowly emote all the problems that come when someone stops listening.
David Chicane is a song title that conjures up images, of either a racing driver, or a particularly dodgy ducker and diver, the long synth toned music, with drum machine, plays more into the latter interpretation, as they discuss what's wrong.
Go Around is build around a thumping bass beat, barely strummed guitar with indie vocals, like early Grandaddy, that feel quite wistful even as string like synths sweep through.
It's North It's North and you'll need a driving beat to get there, with drum & bass riddims married with long tonal synths and fey indie vocals, this is quite the journey into the north, as the vocals go a little bit Indian Summer as sung by Galaxie 500, they gaze towards those Northern Lights.
The Slow Down has almost Postcard records style vocal intonations set against clattering drum machine fills and subtly disturbing synth tones, helping them to deal with The Slow Down of life in the 2020's.
Oblique One has wall quaking slow bass drum beat, with hazy synths and uneasy vocals giving this a dark edge.
Connie Gustafson for those in the know, was of course the original name of Holly Golightly, making this yet another song about Breakfast At Tiffany's, in this case it's a slowly evolving synth wash, that adds a distinctly un-glam drum beat, as the high toned vocals lead us into Connies world, in ways that are not as catchy as Deep Blue Somethings take on the subject.
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Portable is what this music is, if you've streamed it, as the more organ like synths do battle with a over busy breakbeat drum part, the questioning vocal line lingers on making suggestions about what should matter now.
RSS opens using a similar pulsing beat to Richard Pinhas Iceland, giving this a feel of the wastelands covered in penguins, as icy synths make glacial progress with odd interjections of mad clattering percussion, with the almost Thom Yorke at his most pained vocals tumbling down in your RSS feed once more.
The album closes with Lou Deer that's almost nursery rhyme style sparse indie song being slowly strummed, before it begins to build while retaining an almost Daniel Johnston style innocence that then falls away to a sparing outro.
Find out more at https://blackjackilluministrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-slow-down https://www.facebook.com/japanreviewmusic https://japanreview.bandcamp.com/album/the-slow-down
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