Slighter

Slighter, the electronic soundshaper that's been featured in shows like True Blood and Bones, joins me for a chat about his origins versus the present and the current musical climate.
Featured Songs:
Slighter - Have No Fear


Void Signal Intro/Outro courtesy of Processor.

Visit https://slighterofficial.com/ for more Slighter.

Transcript

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Prime: [00:00:00] We'll start, but welcome to avoid signal. I'm your host, Brian prime. I'm joined this week by Colin from Slider and thank you so much for making this work again.

I will go ahead and. put a question to you, but the we had a discussion a few weeks back and we talked about your music a little bit, but I was revisiting it today and yesterday in the run up to this and listening to actually your album from 2014. I wanted to go back and see how that sounded 10 years on.

Really enjoyed my time with it. I think it's, I think it's a great record still. I stumbled on a song I hadn't really taken a lot of notice to before. The song caught up it's track three on the record science of noise. But anyway, aside from that, just listening to the record 10 years on It's interesting to see your sort of progression, but I guess I'll ask you about that, is that when it comes to examining yourself and your own sort of progression how do you feel about where you are now?

Oh, 

Colin: it's [00:01:00] coming out with heavy hitter right out of the bat. It's firstly crazy to think about that album being 10 years old because, like you're in a specific place in time, create, in that creative mode of making. And that encapsulation of that time is in that album. And it was allowing me as somebody who was spending more time in the dance floor realm, because that's where I came from originally was, DJing and raves.

And making music for that whole just experience that is, getting out and being in the dark, munching on drugs and lasers and trying to find a space where that could collide with actual songwriting. And if that makes sense, because not to say that, music played in a club isn't aren't songs, but they're format, they're formatted in a specific way to elicit a specific response while you're dancing, whereas a song verse chorus bridge elicits a different emotional response because, obviously you can dance to it, but there, [00:02:00] there's a tendency to have a little bit more thoughtfulness to it, or a little bit more like longevity, like stick with the audience a little bit longer and imprint a soundtrack to someone's life.

through that songwriting. And that really started to entice me more and more because, electronic music can get very formulated very quickly. And I never really felt like what I'm doing artistically could be, could live that long in such a, small box. So Science and Noise came out as this, it's like the, it's not really my first album because I put out like little albums before that, which were just kind Attempts.

I don't know science and noise felt like an actual album when that came together and caught up, for example, working with Nika, she's such a great vocalist and we both aligned from coming out of making dance records. Like she's a vocalist on I don't know if you're, ever heard of the head candy compilations or any of there's like a whole deep house movement.

And you can tell by her soulfulness of her voice, like [00:03:00] how well that would work with like groovy deep house stuff. And to say could we do something a little bit more drum and bass? Could we make it a little bit more aggressive? Yeah, that's definitely one of my favorite pieces on that album.

And I don't mean to interrupt you here, but that is a thing that you, we did talk about a little bit before, that I would want to hear your thoughts on again was, and it's a thing that you've, I saw you express a little bit of an opinion on like Twitter or something like last year, was That's the difference between writing tracks versus writing songs.

And it stuck with me a lot just because it was like a just enough of a perspective shift on the way we think about something that I, especially music, a thing that I consume every day, right? But to suddenly stop and before I listen to a song or while I am listening to it, take that moment to say is this a song or is this a track?

And I like your distinction of a song is a thing that like maybe has a little bit more of a, I don't want to say purpose, but I feel like it's reaching a little [00:04:00] bit further than a track is maybe. Is that how you feel? Would you agree with that or? 

Colin: Yeah the thing with what I said on Twitter was it was a social experiment to just see because you spend enough time on social media and you just feel like everything is designed to antagonize you so I literally tried to antagonize, I really tried to poke the bear on twitter I wanted to get a response out of people because I knew there were people who were going to be like offended by my you know degrading Tracks quote unquote to something, less than a song.

Prime: Sure. 

Colin: Where it wasn't really meant to be that it was meant to just be a catalyst to have a conversation of, should you really be so wrapped up in the genre of what you're doing, that it has to be a track and it has to be fit into this box. And then it just becomes disposable because that's how it was when you're a DJ.

I'm so far out of it now. I don't assume it's that much different, but like you play tracks out at a club night and then you don't play them again. There's this kind of trickle effect of like more music coming out, getting the [00:05:00] latest thing to the dance floor, et cetera. And, there would be classics that would emerge from that and have that timeless feel to them.

But tracks in general just seem to just be there, do their job and, leave you the minute that they're over. And to me, Again, that's something I did for so long that the meaning of that to me starts to get diluted of yeah, it's fun It's so fun to make people dance But can you make people dance and also make them go oh, I really enjoy listening to that I'm gonna put that on my headphones You know i'm gonna add that to this spotify playlist for driving around or you know Whatever it is that you do in your life.

I feel like That makes music stick around a little bit longer. And that entices me as a creator because, we want to feel like we're doing something that resonates with people. Otherwise you feel so insular. And while, doing stuff for yourself is it, that's a creative feeling to have.

That's great. But at the same time, you want to make a little mark somehow. And that's how I [00:06:00] felt. Every time I approached an album coming into science and noise and moving on from there, it's I want these to be little like milestone moments for me to look back and recognize that's where I was at this particular point in time and to give, anyone who listens to my work, another marker point of this is a I don't know how to say it.

Like it's a, it's that, like you could say I could have a blue period as a painter. It's like this is this period and I looked at like the following records a road And automata and void as a kind of like a trilogy Of thought process that kind of stand they stand on their own But to me, they're all three kind of tell like a three part little story 

And I do quite like the sort of this is going to switch gears a little bit here, but I do quite like the atmospheric sort of the, every album that I've listened to of yours there's going to be the tracks that are, or are the songs that sort of seem, let's get dancing, let's get moving, or [00:07:00] maybe they have something to say.

But then there's also the sort of slower pace kind of atmospheric tracks that are just the as somebody who, Like you said I'm like, I'm not just enjoying this in a dance floor, a mindset or context, but I'm, I'm cleaning my house or I'm cleaning my kitchen or whatever.

So I'm, to have that sort of come on in the background and be like, have a moment of I'm appreciating a thing that, you know. Is maybe this is like the right setting for it, it's just a while I am going about my day or, and maybe there's a component to it that kind of reaches out to me and catches my attention a little bit more than usual, which is, which has happened.

But I think that's such a cool sort of goal to aspire to of this is where I'm at this time. I will put this question to you. It's been you put out this Feudal Engine Last year, 2023. Also real quick, before I go on with asking about like the feature on another album and everything, I, it is worth commenting on the fact that there are a lot of remixes on here.

You've got a ton with a bunch of people and I think that's cool. I think it's cool to [00:08:00] hear different interpretations and rearrangements for things and have artists bring their own skill set to bear on a thing that's already made. I think it can turn out. But do you do you feel that having so many remixes has been a plus or do you ever feel like it has worked against you?

Colin: There's a delicate balance for sure. I love remix culture. It's another part of, being involved in early electronic music stuff in the nineties and like getting bootleg remixes where the, you're flipping like a one of my favorites is in a big country. I have a white label vinyl record.

I have no idea who did the remix of it, but they turned that old eighties track into this big room dance track. And that to me was so cool, to have those flips like that. So I've always enjoyed remix culture and adding remixers to projects, but at the same time, you don't want to overload people.

I've seen, people release remix compilations and have 36 remixes on it. [00:09:00] And I feel like to a point it's hard to say no to people. If you're a creator and you have people that also what you do and they're offering to remix and you don't want to step on their toes and be like, I can't, I've got too many.

So I think that ends up having the negative effect on a very bloated compilation that someone's got to slog through. So I think the best way to do it as and this is from trial and error because I did release a re a remix 

Prime: album, 

Colin: To celebrate like 10 years of slider and have different people remixes throughout all my catalog.

But again, that way it got bloated and it gets hard to get people to dial into a specific remix and, 

Releasing them in on their own was the pathway I went for the new album. So I put the album out and then just trickle out every month, just here's another remix.

It helps people, in this day and age where there's so much music coming out every day to remind them, Hey, I put this album out and here's a new remix. 

Prime: Yeah. 

Colin: So it's all very strategic to me now. And there's, [00:10:00] cause I've done it for so long that I know that if I do it like this and I give people that month, every month, a little prod Hey, we're putting on music over here.

It tends to help the longevity of it instead of lumping them all together and just being like, all right, here you go. Here's a remix compilation. 

Prime: Yeah. 

Colin: Cause that's one of the things that Steven at Brutal Resonance, we talked about was like, could we do a remix compilation for the Feudal Engine?

And he was like, there, it's just, I don't think it's going to work. And I agreed at that point. It's let's just, I'll just trickle them out as we get them. 

Prime: Mhm. 

And I also am a big fan of the kind of remix culture. I wasn't nearly as involved in it as you are, but I still have those fond memories of late 90s, early 2000s of you download or somebody sends you or you hear a remix and you're like, Oh my God, this is so cool.

Who did this? It's such a reimagination of a thing I was familiar with. 

Colin: And there's some great ones too. Gravity kills manipulated. If you ever talk to Jeff from gravity kills, he'll tell you this story about how expensive [00:11:00] that whole process was. You get like a Juno reactor remix on there.

You got a Martin Atkins remix. And then my favorite remixers, I think if you held the gun to my head, it said who's the best remixing. I would say Rabbit in the Moon, hands down. It would be Rabbit in the Moon tied with Cruder and Dorfmeister, but for two totally different reasons, like Rabbit in the Moon had the greatest approach to taking any like pop song.

Like they did Garbage Milk, which is like this slow kind of ballad and they flipped it into this Acid House workout. That was just so cool. I almost, if you listen to my remixes and the Rabbit in the Moon remix of Milk, you'll hear how I pull off of. that remix a lot for inspiration on like arrangement or just like getting something totally different into this realm like I just did for Vaseline the dutch band I did a remix for them where you know they do gothic rock so it's very somber and there's like acoustic guitar and strings in it and I was like oh fuck all that we're gonna go and boom change the tempo bring in an acid 303 [00:12:00] line you know really work in those instrumentations that they originally had in ways that aren't, normal.

That's when I always do a remix. I don't, a lot of people are like, Oh, you just take the vocal and put it on a new song. And to me, that's not remixing. That's okay. Cool. You wrote a song and you knock the vocal on top. I try as hard as possible. When I'm presented with all the parts of a song in the remixing stage to take, A little bit of everything.

It might not be noticeable as its original form but everything is there. It's just messed up and twisted and sometimes I'll reverse things, sometimes I'll throw it through a granular processing, which will stretch it out and make it into a smear. But to me that's what's fun about remixing. It's really totally and this is when I send remixes back to bands I always tell them thank you for letting me fuck up your song because that's literally what I've done.

Yeah 

I like that too because it's like a Especially I think that's so important to you of the original elements of it need to be there Like, it needs to, [00:13:00] I need to know this remix. It's 

Colin: gotta, it's gotta live in that same house, yeah. It's not gonna be down the block in the new subdivision that they're building.

It's gotta be there, right there. 

Yeah. I, and I do, I am such a fan, though, of remixes that go the extra mile to completely change the genre of a song. In particular, there's a remix of Kite. done by the band Glow that's just total re imagining. Similarly the metal band Zeal Ardor has a remix by what's the name?

But it's like a, it takes a metal song and it turns it into this fantastic high tempo sort of a dance track that's got all this anger and aggression to it. Oh, it's fantastic. But I, the re purposing I think is such a, fine art that maybe not a lot of people are, not a lot of people are necessarily very well practiced at.

I'll put this question to you though. Do you feel that remixes and remix culture has do you think it is has improved? Do you like the state that it's in at this point versus maybe [00:14:00] when you started or is it the same? 

Colin: That's a good question. I don't know how much I think like on a technology standpoint, like things are so much easier, even I talk about bootleg remixes, right?

So rewind 20 years in the 2000s when I had that grab that white label in a big country, they didn't have a way to extract the voice, the acapella out of the music. Like you had to be strategically cutting. Around the two track or like the actual final song. You didn't get the parts to it now There's stem splitting and I use logic That's my daw or digital audio workstation where I record it and they've just released a new version that they have an ai Generator in there that will take any song or any audio you put in it and strip it out to vocals drums bass guitars Give you the stem.

So the door is wide open now for bootleg remixes. I wish I had that You Rewind 20 years ago because I was literally I remember doing I did a bootleg remix of left field [00:15:00] Where I took the audio off the actual cd took it into like what was it? Sound forge I think and cut it up, you know Do that to make the bootleg remix and to have the technology now back then I think would have been I would have done so many more bootleg remixes to the point now where i'm thinking like, oh should I do a few?

Would it be fun to so that element I think It's definitely improved and it's giving people more chances to be creative without the bog down of the limitation. Maybe sometimes the limitation is good for the creativity, so I don't know if one direction is better than the other. I think the quality of remixes in general sound wise is just exponentially better because everybody has access to high end stuff in their computer now.

You don't need hardware. You think about early electronic music and how even like the prodigy that's, was Liam sitting in his bedroom. With a whole bunch of gear and sampling [00:16:00] into hardware, and not a computer in sight and just live in life. 

Yeah. I remember seeing the the pictures from back then of Oh, here's prodigies live set up and it's a tower of gear, right?

Colin: You couldn't even see him. No, you could not see Liam. That's why he put the, that's why Keith and everyone there was, they were dancing to give you something to look at. 

Yeah. Yeah. Just of just gear that's being used and and the sound quality like certainly benefited from it. Cause at the time that the Prodigy came out, there was nothing that sounded like that.

It was so loud and so crisp and interesting compared to a lot of other things at the time. It is a sort of a huge factor to me though, when it comes to as somebody who is I just got my first DJ controller. I'm going to, it's a thing I've had an interest in for a long time, but now that I'm sitting down to think about, Oh, I want to play music live for people.

And I start listening to stuff and comparing like, Oh, I've loved this track for 20 years, but this track, It doesn't really sound all [00:17:00] that great, or it doesn't have great production or something like that versus something newer is that, substantial increase in quality that we can see in everybody?

Like we were just talking about of somebody's regular ass desktop computer is now going to produce a song that sounds masterful, right? Like amazing. It's so much louder and crisp and blah, blah, blah. Do you think that is does that sort of at least what are your thoughts on the sort of modern raising of the bar versus some older tracks?

Cause at least for me, like I will listen to older songs and I'm like, Oh, I loved this song, but it sounds very tinny or it's very and it sounds antiquated, it's like it was some industrial musician time. Yeah. It was somebody making the most of what they had. But sure. I 

Colin: think, that's the problem I think within, is it a problem?

I guess we industrial is such a DIY scene, there's no access to high end studios. There's. A lot of that got to get done [00:18:00] what I can with what I have. And there's a lot to that I think creates an artist's just persona and what they put out. You can look at like youth code, for example, there's a band that's really lo fi in the terms of the gear being used, but the abrasiveness of the music.

You don't mind it. 

If they were doing, an album like delirium, or conjure one, then for sure, you'd be like, Oh, okay I'm losing something here because the details and the dynamics aren't as polished. So I really do think it's a matter of if you're setting out to DJ and you have this wide breadth of.

Stuff you like is to try to find how things can fit together in a in that same Era so that you don't run into those kinds of issues because yeah, even just look at like skinny puppies catalog Yeah, if you played [00:19:00] something from last rights, and then you played something off weapon their last album There's going to be a radical change in production quality just alone by the people who worked on that because That's how they've evolved.

And I think that's, to me as a talking about barometers and moments at times, it really shows you how that progression happens for creativity. I think if you give everybody the tools to do something and the, that, barriers removed and now everybody has access.

I don't think that necessarily is that like term, like all boats rise. Because unfortunately, like I've said this and this is another controversial take is that I think Industrial music as a culture attracts a lot of people who don't have talent because they think it's easy Oh, I can just scream, I don't have to sing.

Oh, I don't have to learn how to play a guitar. I just have to plug it through as much distortion that no one can tell I can't play a guitar. You know what I mean? Yes, [00:20:00] I do. And I agree 

with you 

Colin: completely. Go on. So there's so much of that just seeps through because the, again, you can get a laptop, you can get some headphones, you can get, Cracked plugins, crack your DAW, go to town.

You don't need any money. And your next thing you're putting music out and that's for better or worse for our culture. I think if industrial or any genre, that has a small following doesn't police itself in some sort of quality, you're going to end up with too much crap in it. And I think that really just turns certain people off.

From the outside who look in and go, Oh, okay. I thought this genre was, better than this. Yes. And I don't probably get shit on for that. Take, I don't care. I really wish people would stop creating such a circle jerk around, Oh, they're so great. And you're so great. Maybe tell them, your snare sucks.

Work on it. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you think about tuning the guitar a little bit, or, maybe a some training, some practice because you want to just jump in right at [00:21:00] the, I wrote my first song. Let's everyone hear it. I'm like, I'm not. No. A hundred songs. And then maybe I'll listen to your a hundred and one song.

Yes. That's how I feel as a creative person being around the bit. 

Yes. I agree. I do agree with you. I think that it's that that DIY aspect in it. It gives people the sort of idea that like if they can do it, I can do it. And I think the crowning difference in a lot of those cases is that using a big example, Front 242 none of them started out trying to make music as musicians.

They wanted to do it because they were not musicians, but they still took the time to okay, these are the components we have. How do we make them sound good? How do we make them sound like music? How do we, put the, putting the extra effort and everything? And I, while I'm a huge fan of innovation, I'm like, Oh, I made do with what I had, but I still made this cool thing.

Great. Like I, I feel like that comes with a knowledge of what you're working with coupled with a desire to want to do [00:22:00] better. And I will say this, and maybe this is, I don't know if this is controversial or not, I don't give a shit . But I think that so many people in the industrial scene and the adjacent scenes, golf, whatevery, dark, whatever I think there are a lot of people who are not very open to feedback.

So I think even if. If someone were to set them down and maybe not say your snare sucks, but but say hey, I, I like what you're doing, but you could do this better or that better or whatever constructive feedback, I feel like a lot of people are not going to be open to hearing that I, they're, they want to do what they want to do and this is a scene that sort of nurtures that like I'm pursuing my own path and doing my own thing.

Okay, great. That's awesome. I'm glad for you. But hey, also, I'm not going to play it at the club. Cause it's not very good or it's whatever, like it's, I feel like that the personalities that it brings is also a component of that. I don't know. What do you 

Colin: think? That's, that goes for any kind of art.

You could be an impressionist painter. You could, there are people [00:23:00] who it's really just a, to me, a matter of, are you really an artist or are you in this for other reasons? Do you know what I mean? Because an artist themselves and I, speaking from my own experience, like I don't like what I end up making at the end of the day, like I always feel like it could be better.

So to have the availability to know. That I can be vulnerable to someone else and say check this out. What do you think? 

Prime: And if 

Colin: I trust that person and there's only a few people I would even turn around and say, Hey, what do you think? I need some help that's a vulnerability that a lot of people who work solely on ego, they can't have that vulnerability because the minute that they say to themselves, this could be better, or I'm not as good, blah, blah, they've diminished their own.

Egotism, and that would just deflate them psychologically, because they built up this persona and they've had a lot of people tell them. Yes. Oh, you're so good You know a lot especially if [00:24:00] they're of the attractive variety, right? Because then they get pined after and they get lusted after and if enough fans tell them Oh, you're so great because you look the part You misstep and you start, you know pulling punches in the music.

Those people are never going to tell you that you didn't hit it at time. They're going to be like still into it. And that perpetuates that. And, it's a sad place to be as a creative person. If you're reliant on a fan base to to give you that. E oing. I try personally.

I don't have that many fans. It's probably for the betterment of my art. 

What on that note and I do agree with you there as well. I think there's a lot of I, I have a look or I have a gimmick and a theme and a brand and I'm coasting on that and the music is whatever. It's good enough.

It's what fans expect. They're expecting the middle of the road and that's what. Because the person in question may be relying on all these other sort of [00:25:00] apparatus to make up for their, who gives a shit if my song sounds like garbage and it's full three minute, 30 second runtime.

It sounds great in this YouTube TikTok clip or this Instagram reel where I'm wearing this thing and I look so cool. I feel like that's definitely a thing that, that happens. And 

Colin: right. They're putting the cart before the horse. And there's a lot of that is just what musicians and artists are being bought and sold right now.

Is that you have to be a content creator. Your art itself is not as important, it's better to be a curated face and accessible on such a, personal level. Because that's what, that's the social media, I don't really give a fuck what my favorite musician ate for breakfast.

And a lot of the times, once you crack into that nut, you might start seeing them say shit that you don't want to hear them say, if you're a Morrissey fan, I heard, and then during the whole COVID 19, I used to like Ian Brown from the Stone Roses, but that [00:26:00] dude went off the fucking rails. And I'm like, great.

I'm glad I know that. So every time I listen to one of your songs in the back of my head, I got. This guy's tweets rolling around. They're like, don't meet your idols. Thing is so personified into like their social media presence that, it gets a little, I don't know. I think they get so caught up in that and they forget, like, why are you here?

Stop and have an existential moment of like, why are you here to make art or are you here to be famous? Do you need accolades or do you need to self express? And I'm always going to sit in the camp of. It's self expression. And if self expression, if the result is, polished and amazing and great, it's probably going to resonate with me more just because of where I come from, I work in audio technology, I want to hear awesome things.

So I listen to a new band's album and if it's fucking perfect songwriting, perfect production, then it's this is great. But at the same time, if it's like, there's a whole lot of passion and it's got lo fi production, but it hits me. [00:27:00] That's all that fucking matters. And people need to remember that, if you're going into this crazy thing called music, have some personality and have some willingness to be vulnerable.

Cause it's not all bravado that you see on stage and everyone expects, I think that's some of the funniest things. Like people start talking to me after seeing like what little persona I have online. It's Oh, I didn't expect you to be so funny. And You just think we sit around and brood like all the time.

Yes, 

Prime: exactly. We're in 

Colin: the dark, we turn the lights off, we just brood and wait for you to Listen to our songs and industrial music. 

Isn't that what you're, is that 

Colin: not 

what you're doing? We're human 

Colin: beings. 

We laugh. We cry. I have deep flaws. It's fine. Whatever. Whatever. Yeah, no, I agree with you.

I do I do think that sort of, the personal aspect of it too is that like I, that it can be such a blessing and such a curse because on the one hand you can meet lovely [00:28:00] people and you can find out like hey this person who's music I, maybe I'm not really into it but they're so cool. They're so rad, like I, I will go out and see them live every chance I get because they put on a great show or they're so sweet or they're so nice or charismatic or whatever.

That also comes with the added benefit of finding out somebody is garbage or, like you said, like during a lockdown hey, somebody's running their mouth saying some out of pocket shit that you're like, Oh man I really loved your music and I thought you were so cool, but now you're some sort of, Idiot, and I'm disappointed.

Colin: There's a lot of disappointment going on there. And I think that again, goes back to the scene propping up people who are really fucking nice, but make really bad music. And then if that person help happens to fall out of favor and then there you go, man, like that's. Like maybe the music wasn't good all along.

Yeah, maybe people were just being nice to you. And again, that's the scene That's every and I get it. I really don't want people to think that like I am totally [00:29:00] anti scene but I just feel like there are a lot of negative Connotations to scenes and how they're structured and because I never was part of one.

I think that's my problem I grew up in bumfuck. Nowhere. My exposure to electronic music was not originally through raves You And my exposure to industrial music was not from industrial clubs. It was literally stumbling through record stores and finding music and pushing the two together. Like, why can't I listen to, KMFDM and then also listen to BT?

I had no idea that We have to sit in a scene and we have to follow the rules. 

I can relate to that a lot because I also didn't have a scene or a culture or anything. I grew up in isolation as well, having songs sent to me on the Internet and being like, Hey, that's cool. I'll listen to this.

And then I'm also going to listen to you mentioned BT. Bob, that's a great pick. But also Hey, instead of in fact 

Colin: furthest from KMFDM, I could think. 

Yeah. For me, it was like, I'm going to [00:30:00] listen to one Scott and then I'm going to listen to infected mushroom or, something like that.

Or hallucinating. 

Colin: You could probably draw a line though. Infected muscle, mushroom, or hallucinogen, or even spongle. But yeah, I totally get what you mean. And I wish there was more of that. And that's what I honestly thought, like the naive me, rewind to 1999 when I was putting my first music on mp3.

com and I was like, this is the greatest place because there are no, like it's, they sold it as there's no just one, culture. It's every culture. It's all these people coming together. It's the melting pot. It's the internet. And like, why should that not influence? Our art, if we're coming up in that and what we're interested in and that's what I that's where I want to be as far as an artist is concerned.

I don't, you want to call me industrial fine. You want to call me EDM fine. It's, it doesn't matter. I just want to, I want to have something that there's a thread, right? I want my goal is there's a thread. If you hear a Slider song you know it's a Slider song. That's all I want. 

And I do agree with you in that respect too, of I, even now [00:31:00] as I'm like fancying myself trying to become a DJ, I've been to plenty of goth clubs now.

They play a lot of goth music and I find myself headhunter a lot. Yeah. And I find myself like flipping through songs. I'm like what I want to play. And I'm like I want to play all this shit. That is not industrial music. I want to play all this stuff that people in the scene.

Don't play. Or they, maybe they don't know about it, or maybe they do and they don't give a shit, or whatever. But I feel you're it speaks to me when you talk about that sort of why can't we have both these things? Let's play The Prodigy, and Infected Mushroom, and a Suicide Commando track, and a whatever.

A Gravity Kills song, or a Circuit Preacher, or something cool. And like, why do we have to bother with Or sticking with this one thing, let's make some goths uncomfortable and play some dance music. I can't dance to goth music. So either. Let's play some upbeat shit.

I don't know. But I do agree with you on that point. I will, we're already at 38 minutes and I want to put another, I will I'll actually go ahead and put the last question of the [00:32:00] show to you because I, you give good answers. You give a lot of meat and potatoes to, to dissect talk a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice way of saying that. Yeah. But what is something that you now that we've both been like shitting about like the scene what, yeah. What's something that you have been enjoying recently? And your answer can be anything, a book, a movie, TV show, or just what's something that you're jazzed about when you wake up?

Colin: Oh the new Trent Moller record is excellent. 

I have really not heard it myself, but I know the name. 

Colin: Yeah, he has a really cool talk about, milestone albums, like from where he started with IDM. electronic sounds that didn't really have vocals in them to slowly starting to pull in guitars and Different vocalists and then just this morphing that whole vibe into a post punk band Format that's really I think it's a very cool evolution as an artist But [00:33:00] you can see how people have dropped off at different stages.

Like I can't deal with it because he brought guitars in, or I can't deal with it because it's got this like slow dive influence now, or the the album that's got like a surf rock vibe. And I love that. I think that's great. So I would the new treadmill record. Highly listenable.

Just good this time of year, or depending on what hemisphere you're in, for us, the leaves falling and it's been rainy and misty here. And it's been like the perfect soundtrack for that. So I've been really quite enjoying that. And then. The new record from dive frog and broiling water again, this is totally not seen like industrial scene stuff, but They're the slow core slash shoe gaze realm And just a masterfully written album and this and the quality of the recording again for me as an engineer It's just like they really nailed it.

So it's like such a beautiful experience to listen to nothing's like out of place and It's perfectly, it's the right amount of loudness. Yes. As an engineer. So a lot of people like to [00:34:00] crank stuff up now you don't have to do it that loud. 

Yeah. Real quick on that note. I think that you, your answer reminded me of I'm definitely going to check out this trend tomorrow record.

Cause I. I know the name and it's, I associate it with like high quality electronic sort of production. But I, the mentioning of like guitars and people falling away and having stuff against things. I, it just reminded me of adjacent to what we were just talking about, I was at Mechanism is 2020 zoo and this band had just finished playing.

That was a more traditional sort of. A thing, like some dudes with some keyboards and guitars, like a little, if things got a little chubby on the floor, it was great. It was a nice change of pace, right? Hey, we're one dude with a 

Colin: drum pad and one drumstick. 

Yeah. Like we, it was fun, but the next band comes out and they're like, there aren't going to be any fucking guitars up here.

All right, cool. I don't know why you have to be a dick about it, but I think I'll use this opportunity to go smoke. It's you're alienating people right out of the gate just because you want to [00:35:00] like shit on something. Let people enjoy a guitar. 

Colin: It's so funny to me, it's so funny to me that the the hills that musicians will die on, 

If it's not guitars, there was back in the 90s there, in L.

A. there was a guy who was selling bumper stickers that said drum machines have no soul. You get them for a dollar. There was like a whole article written about this guy and how much he hated drum machines and they have no soul. And these are the hills that music, cause he was a jazz musician or something like that.

So he's Oh, it's so antithetical to creativity to have a machine playing a rhythmic pattern that doesn't change. It's I hate to tell you this, but people like repetitive noise. Yeah. 

Yeah. Yeah. But anyway aside from that, like just, man, just love things, appreciate things.

I feel is but I, band evolutions are a thing that I really like to see and see how people evolve over time, especially once they have some. A pretty lengthy [00:36:00] back catalog to them. Trent Tumaller is a great example. I still really like Uncle a lot. And I listen to Uncle pretty on the regular.

Those are Alright, I can talk about uncle. You strike me as a dude who's into uncle. 

Colin: My friend, Chris Allen, he mixed the war stories album. I, for me, all so science fiction came out. I heard that when I was in high school, just having shadow involved. I was like, oh, this is cool.

I like, just discovered what trip hop is. And there's another example of throwing a whole bunch of people in that are out of that element, like having Tom York come in or again, Ian Brown come in. And then to watch them go from that to Never Land, where he, James LaVelle, starts pulling in some different people to work on it, and having Rich Fyle sing on Never Land.

He had never really sang before. If Rich's work, he used to make breakbeat tracks for Adam Freeland's label. Here's a guy who was solely a producer that James heard him singing in a cab, I think it was. He's just oh no, you can sing dude, you, let's [00:37:00] push come let's start writing these tracks and, originally he was going to sing on some of the science fiction stuff too, but I could go on and on.

But anyway, my point is that here's my point. New Uncle, no, not good. Go find Toy Drum. 

Okay. Oh, Toy Drum was the Gavin Clark sound project? Yes. 

Colin: Oh, his voice was amazing. Pablo, Psychonauts, Pablo, he came on and started to help out in Uncle for war stories. And went into the nightfall and like really Brought something really interesting to uncle and then he he and james left uncle After where the nightfall and then I don't know to me.

I feel like all the talent left the room 

James is a 

Colin: great current great curator But there's a couple of things I heard after that I was just he's got one track with some guy who's really trying to do his best Tricky impression. And I was like, man, just call up Tricky. Why don't you call up Tricky?

What is he doing? Probably nothing. Just. Oh, no. Tricky is another prophylactic prophylactic. Oh, I can't say that word. Prolific. You know what I mean? Prolific. There we go. Yeah. [00:38:00] It's been a long day for me. Check out everything he's been doing, too. He set up a false idols label, he's been putting out really cool stuff, really minimal stuff, like right to the point kind of stuff that it's a great exercise in minimalism.

You really don't need a lot to say something. People get way too involved in the, like the big giant productions and having instrumentation on instrumentation to tell a story. a story that you could have done with three things. 

And that, I feel like that is such a great segue back around to the idea of sometimes less is so much more.

And especially like in an EDM or industrial space, like less can be so much more. Less 

Colin: is not only more, but it's also confidence. It tells the audience that you're confident in what you're creating because you felt that you didn't need anything else. I know this from a creative perspective too because there was a point in, like my early 20s where I would go into a production and I'd be like, okay, it's not good enough.

I need another layer. I need another synthesizer. I need another atmospheric bed. I need to do another [00:39:00] vocal double. I need to, add to this. And then you get this very bloated wall of sound to me now looking back. That was just pure. I'm not confident in this idea. I should have looked at the idea as a whole and think about how can you get this idea across without needing to stack 12 synthesizers on top of each other.

I, so for 

Colin: me now in my older age, looking at bloated projects, I see some people on social media will like brag Oh look, I have a hundred tracks in the session to me. I'm just thinking, is that a good idea? 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Colin: Core of that can you play that on a guitar or can you play that on a piano? And say this is a good song.

And I think he was illustrating the point there too of a at least what I, and this is maybe just my imagination, but I feel like so many people like are afraid of this, of the space between their sounds. You know what I mean? Like you're, it's okay to have some silence or to have there's a, the compulsion to fill all the [00:40:00] space and that can be counterproductive.

Real quick, before we move on from uncle I do agree. Newer uncle is not great. I like the remixes that are coming of it. A lot of the remixes of newer uncle stuff is more interesting than the base. But if you. Anybody listening, if you decide to check out Uncle early stuff is great, war stories and science fiction and everything, and Never Another Land, but Where Did the Night Fall is a double album that's just amazing Gavin Clark, and a song with Mark Lanigan, and Nick Cave.

Colin: Yeah, that was a surprise too, to have that. And I like those, the tracks with Lila Moss. I think she's a really good vocalist too. 

Yes. 

Colin: If you want to go like uncle adjacent Rich file has a project called we fell to earth and they put out one record and it's with Randy Ray Fowler who played with Queens of the Stone Age.

The two of them got together and made this really cool. Just again, it's like post punk, but atmospheric. It's really cool. It's very uncle adjacent very cool stuff and I wish the two of them [00:41:00] would make more records together. 

Okay, cool. I will check that out. The other thing that I've been enjoying musically lately is to give a genre answer is and your comments about minimalism reminded me was Circuit Preacher.

He's a fresh face on the scene with a sort of a newer project. It's only been around for about a year and a half or something like that. But does a lot with little, and I've been really enjoying my time with with his record over the past past couple of weeks. Just, it was nice.

Colin: Yeah, I'll probably have to check that out because you're the second person who's mentioned that, Sam. I stay a little far away from, there's a level of influence, and you don't want to be too close to your contemporaries. So a lot of industrial skirt as far as my own casual listening.

I'll check it out. 

Yeah, for sure. It yeah, it gets me, it speaks to that younger Brian again, of Hey, here's a song that's like kind of minimal and here's some shouting and we're mad. And I'm like, yeah, I am mad. [00:42:00] I can't wait till I'd like it really dials in on that. 

Colin: That's how I feel when I'm like, when I listened to health.

I was like, where was this band when I was 18? Cause like this, his whole lyrics of just and I'm so sad. I'm just like, and then it's just an aggressive music behind it. I was like, yeah, where was this when I had my teenage angst period? 

Yeah, that is middle aged angst.

Yeah, just that late stage angst is what I'm in. Yeah, what a great band as far as and that's the thing. I'm a big lyric guy. So like I you know, sometimes they don't fucking matter. And that's fine. I don't. always give a shit, but for the most part lyric, good lyrics will elevate a song for me. And especially if it's something that's honest and feels like you said, you use the word in this show, a bunch vulnerable.

I'm a big fan of that. 

Colin: You talk about, Mark Lang and you talk about Gavin Clark, two guys that Their heart is on their sleeve when they're [00:43:00] singing, and that to me resonates way more than the post production you could have done to pitch correct it, to layer it, to take out all the humanity to it, which is a lot of what post production on vocals are these days.

And stripping out that vulnerability because they want to be, have that bravado and they want to be seen a certain way. But I don't think, I don't think that resonates fully beyond just like the, Oh yeah, that's cool. I get you want to stick to the ribs of people, show some of vulnerability, write a good lyric from the, from, your soul as cheesy as that sounds.

And it's one of the things I always struggle with Writing lyrics myself is I want to say something, but I want to say it in a way that's not so obtuse, but at the same time, you want to connect. So there's always that line with lyrics. And yeah, I think of some bands that like Underworld, Carl Hyde, the way he writes is it's all free form out of his mind into a notebook.

And then he [00:44:00] just gets together with Rick and just Rick now. And they write, he just flows. And you think of how well that works in that space and born slippy, like that's just a song that's really written about his alcoholism. But do you really know that? Not really, because it's a word jumble, but it works.

So I think there's space for both and it really comes down to how you say it really at the end of the day. And like we said, it's gotta be vulnerable. It's gotta be real and you can't be pulling punches and you can't be saying, Oh, look at me. And I'm puffing my chest out. Cause that gets old real quick.

It does. 

And I I've been, I've always been a proponent of, I have a background in creative writing and that's what I went to school for, but I've always been a proponent of regardless of your medium, when you sit down say something that is true whatever you, whatever words you're going to say, it should be a thing that you hold to be true and say it and mean it in the words that come, spring from you the most easily.

He is. [00:45:00] But and I feel like there are that's such a an asset that is lacking in a lot of I don't want to continue shitting on electronic music but I, anyway you get the point. 

Colin: You have to cultivate it. You really do have to cultivate it because there is the culture at large that wants to show you that everything is this, facade was from auto and you start buying into that regardless of genre.

You're going to pull punches. Agree. 

I don't want to keep you all day. This has been a blast. I appreciate your time. It's been great to talk to you again. I will actually, I am just now remembering that earlier in the show, I was going to ask you about what comes next for you. I will. So before we wrap up, I do want to know what is the next chapter for you and for Slider?

Colin: I am in knee deep in just writing. I've written like 13 just demos over the summer and my I came off of doing the last album saying I'm never going to do an album again, just because, [00:46:00] it's like that get this out of my fucking face. But maybe I'll do an album. I don't know. I'm taking it More slow in the sense of just I do this for me.

So I want to have fun again. And to me, having fun is writing a bunch of demos and writing outside of genre and trying to take some genres and smash them together. Like drum and bass breaks. I always like those bringing those into more slower tempo tracks. Can you flip a track and have, like a really heavy techno kick drum, but then also flip into a drum and bass breakdown?

Like, how does that work? So to me, that's. It's fun, a fun place to be. I'm doing that. And then depending on when you drop this, if it's before November 4th, people can download a free frontline assembly remix that I've thrown out for Halloween times off my band camp. Excellent. 

This will be out before then.

Colin: Oh, cool. Then yeah go grab that. I back in nine years ago, I did a remix of Next War from the Echoes compilation. There was two bonus tracks on Echoes that were written with my friend Ian [00:47:00] Pickering from the Seeker Pins. And he wrote the hooks for Bill and Tahir, Frontline Assembly, and Sneaker Pimps, kinda in a blender.

So fucking cool. When Jared reached out back nine years ago from frontline, he was like we need a remix for the cold waves comp. Can you help us out? We needed it like a deadline, like now I'm like, Oh yeah, fuck, I'll do it. Sure. I want to do next war though, because I love that song. If you give me a song, I love I'll kick a remix out.

No problem. So I did that and it went on the limited edition compilation. And that was just charity. You can only get it by being at cold waves and buying the CD or I think yeah. Jason sold it briefly on the website for cold waves. Anyway, I dug it out and said, you know what? More people should hear this.

It's been nine years. Let's remaster it. Let's make it sound better than ever. Turn the volume up. Yeah. And threw it on Bandcamp free download. Excellent. Grab it. Enjoy it. 

Yeah, 

Colin: I'm going to go get it right. It goes away on it goes away on November 5th. I'm going to make it a Bandcamp subscriber exclusive.

So you got to give me like 25 bucks a year to hear the back catalog stuffs. 

Yeah, 

Colin: I know. Twenty five [00:48:00] bucks and you get. God, I don't even know how many releases we have now. I know. I imagine. 

Imagine when we were kids, like going to the record store and spending 25 bucks to get an entire artist discography.

Colin: Yeah. Don't get me started on that. I remember the first CD I ever bought was 1999. It was a 20 CD. I was like, wow, this is expensive. Tapes are so much cheaper. 

Yeah, I remember those days. And I still remember being in like a warehouse music and being like, Oh, wow, it's twenty, twenty two dollars or whatever for the new Perfect Circle single or album.

And the album's only 30 fucking minutes long or something like. Oh, it's 

Colin: worse. So it's Was imports. Yes. You go into the import section, for me, it was like Newberry comics here in East coast. And it'd be like some, that's the first time I heard the second sneaker pimps album was an import because it wasn't released in America splinter.

And that was like 25 bucks for the, and I was like, I'm buying this. It's a new sneaker prints album. I don't care. I miss that element. I [00:49:00] miss buying something without knowing. 

Yeah. 

Colin: I'm looking at the cover and I'm thinking this could be cool. I think that's the, that's how I first bought so many C I think that's the first frontline.

See, I didn't really know what, who Frontline was I bought Implode. And I was like, cause the Dave McKeon artwork on the cover, I was like, what is this guy turning into a bug? This has got to be some crazy music. Blow my little 17 year old mind now, please. And it did. Yeah, exactly. 

I, that was the fun of it.

Oh, I loved buying compilations, weird compilations of Oh, what's industrial madness. Or Industrial Revolution, or whatever, and you hear all these bands that are doing weird shit. Yeah. Or all 

Colin: those Cleopatra compilations. Ah, I was 

such a sucker for those, man. I bought so many fucking tribute CDs for bands I didn't even listen to.

I just was like, yeah, I wanna hear Raised in Black do the cure. I don't know the original song, but this one's cool. Yeah, those were, 

Colin: it's a fun time to have an elastic brain. That's the benefit of youth is that like, when you're [00:50:00] not exposed to things new things come along, you don't have a, an immediate like gut response to say, Oh, 

Prime: Yeah, 

Colin: because you don't have that experience yet, right?

So when we hear new music, as we get older and not to go off on a neuro logical, but we, our brains, we love nostalgia. So like when you hear something and you go that reminds me of this. There's a reason because your brain's using the same neural pathway. You hear a song you don't like at first because, Oh, this is new.

I don't get it. Listen to it two or three times. Let your brain. Think about it because what will happen is your brain will go, Oh, okay. I remember this a little bit. That's why people all the time will say Oh, I didn't that song until I heard it five times. Literally that's how your brain worked and that's how your brain was working as a young one, because it was so elastic and you didn't care.

You could listen to. Anything and that's the benefit of youth which we can have that throughout life. 

Yep. We don't have elastic brains anymore We've just got these stupid. Oh, I don't know what I'm saying. We just Old and 

Colin: crusty 

ones. Yeah, 

Colin: we got 

these rigid brains So like 

Colin: That rubber band that you find in the back of the drawer that's been there for 20 years and it's all Like you [00:51:00] can't even stretch it out anymore 

Yep.

Yeah, that's our stupid brains now all I will actually wrap this up now. Thank you so much for your time and having a chat. It's been such a pleasure. Okay.