Slicker - The Latest
(Hefty)
What the hell happened to R&B music? Who told Destiny's Child to care about the track playing behind their singing and not just their singing? Who told Timbaland to start listening to abstract techno?
Which somehow leads us to another person who changed his music after listening to lots of abstract techno, a well-to-do white guy named John Hughes the Third a.k.a. head honcho of Hefty Records a.k.a. the son of that director guy a.k.a. that guy who used to singing all bluesy-like in Bill Ding b.k.a. Slicker. Hughes has turned his post-rock inspired techno into something closer to current R&B, much like a bunch of Timbaland-penned backing tracks. All that's missing is a pop princess like Aaliyah or a smooth chick like Missy Elliott, and these could go straight to commercial pop radio... or something.
And this is not a bad thing! This is a 1000% good thing. Hughes' previous music under the Slicker name was an odd concotion of sounds. Coming from the rock background into beat-based dance music, Hughes wrote dance music like a rock musician. He layered it a lot. He layered it too much. He layered it too damn much, and what was left was a very cluttered, dense bed of sounds. It was so cluttered, I should call it a "cluttered mess," but it was still interesting enough not to be a mess. Hughes was very creative in his collection of sounds and how he used them to create both beats and hooks/hiccups, making the music "interesting" to listen to, at least.
While Hughes reduces the clutter a lot on his second album, The Latest, the beats, grooves, and hooks/hiccups are still generated by odd sounds--interesting, unique sounds like those used in the first album. What's different now is you don't have to struggle to hear them and filter them out from all the other things going on. The music is able to retain everything that made it "interesting," but by being more focused and simple, make it easier for the ear to find the main groove or beat and hold on to it for the ride.
There is still a bit of skronk and noise here, so perhaps Aaliyah's simple singing isn't enough to make Hefty the next Bad Boy or Roc-a-Fella. Hughes does have his pop princess, of sorts, though. On album opener "Hard," Hughes uses a recording of director/actress Asia Argento (who recently had Hughes soundtrack her Scarlet Diva movie) saying a single "doo" as a counter-beat to the pulsing, stuttering drum machine beat that dominates the track. Like on "Hard," most of the tracks here are successful because of the complexity of the beat. On the next track, "FrustRache," Hughes starts with a buckling sound and the steady rumbling of low bass and beats countered by slipstream synth tones--a very trance-like section--but as the song nears the end, it morphs very subtly into a more active, tribal beat. That is the formula here, start with a beat accented by found sounds or simple keyboard tricks, give the beat a few stutter-steps along the way, and let the beat morph into other new beats, with their own accompanying sounds and hiccups.
This is a great step forward for Hughes. It seems very much in line with what his friends The Aluminum Group did with John Herndon on their latest album, only the beats and rhythms are more complex and enticing. Everything that was hard to like about Slicker's first album has been filtered out, and what was left was enhanced and strengthened. This is just an enjoyable organic techno album.
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