Slugabed - Inherit The Earth Album Review

Rating: 4 out of 5

Slugabed is an emerging UK electronic music producer, whose sound is defined by minimal beats, wonky atmospheres and an overall wide-eyed, innocent playful approach. His newest album 'Inherit The Earth' has been a much-anticipated release since the lead single 'Infinite Wave' dropped a few months back. This track is able to take you on a soothing, but warped journey with playful wandering and bouncing, yet low key beats as well as other elements coming into play, such as crashes percussion and calming breathers to give the song twists and turns. The rest of the album is here now and whole thing is quite the adventure.

After a quick, scuzzy intro track, 'Stupid Earth' properly kicks this record off with fluorescent, sunny textures before some more engine-starting-like sweeping enters as well as more warped, clunky beats. The track continues to switch up between being warm and mechanical giving an interesting juxtaposition and balance, which is bound to grab your attention.

'Levitating Above My Own Useless Body' is more mellow and has a bit of a frown on it. There's still something of a childlike nature to Slugabed's sound here, but like it's not really in the mood to play, the way these moody, yet bright beats just stumble along. On the flipside 'Gold' is soulful and has a swagger to it, with the assistance of Hairy Hands and Peter Lyons, providing swerving, loose vocals. Slugabed's own work on this track features the textures bursting into these quick sprints of jittering to keep things bendy.

This record has a real knack for taking you a lot of places you didn't think you'd end up going when a song initially starts and this is by Slugabed making the most out of layers. He displays a great talent for planting a seed in the early stages of a song, whilst all the initial elements take over, then in the final stages, that seed will have grown into a pretty flower.

Flipping things up again is the most maddening track on the album, 'Very Serious Puzzle', a song which just goes all-over-the-place for four minutes. This features tense sweeping sounds as well as a space-oddity atmosphere with textures that sound and feel like space station gear. These aspects keep going in differing, unpredictable directions making it a dizzying, thrilling experience, despite the fact that this song isn't particularly energetic.

'Feeding Time' features bright keys dozily roll about, whilst jumpy sax takes the forefront giving this song a classy, fun feel to it. This track also features these notes which just keep going up and down, but seem to jump even higher every time they go up again, like the soundscapes are in the best kind of drunken mindset, where everything seems ridiculous, but all the greater for it.

'Earth Is Gone Sorry' is chilled out and blissful, but still manages to build into something with a layer of epic quality to it, the way a lot of this song is glacial, serene waves and beeps. However, with additional percussive beats towards the end it feels like you're staring from the top of a mountain.

'Inherit The Earth' is a damn fine electronic record, where Slugabed's core formula of minimal, cutesy beats, is able to travel across many moods and atmosphere's, as well as put, at least on paper, contrasting ideas and elements. This is fine lesson in how less sometimes can mean more, with Slugabed taking simple, minimal approaches, yet creating such a vast world where seemingly anything is possible.