Slg: Quarter Past Eleven EP
Level

The fourth installment in Daniel Fritschi's Düsseldorf-based Level Records imprint arrives by way of Lodz , Poland with the debut EP by Slg (Lukasz Seliga). Though its contents generally uphold the label's style of deep minimalism (the songs on the A side especially so), Seliga subtly re-makes and re-models the template on the second side. The disc begins, oddly enough, with “Goodbye,” a serene opener whose snapping clicks and bass tones emerge from an aquatic haze before being wrapped in cresting waves of static, followed by “Warm” which soulfully swings with a light but insistent bounce. Compared to the opening pair, the B side's pieces develop more dramatically. The title track opens with alternating chords, elegant and bright on the one hand, hazy on the other, while minimal microhouse pulses and funky bass lines stroll. But over the course of its seven minutes, billowing arrays of shiny tones incrementally extend the song's scope while the repetition of the alternating chords concomitantly deepens the hypnotic effect. Seliga beautifully modulates the intensity of “Anymore”; opening with a tech-house electro-groove, multiple layers of symphonic tones accumulate, gradually increasing in volume as the song's attack escalates until he abruptly removes the accumulated layers to let the beats, now starkly alone, ride it out—a remarkable end to an equally remarkable composition.

August 2005