Slogun — Less Travelled

Less Travelled is a 2021 CD compilation of EP & single tracks from NYC’s Slogun. And as you'd expect from this American PE project, the sound throughout this thirteen-track collection is both suffocating and hopelessly constricting.

The release appears on Italy’s Old Europa Café- with the CD being presented in a suitable monochrome and stark six-panel digipak. It features thick and bold black texts, over grey and overexposed photographs. The release is ltd to a pressing of three hundred copies.

The disc brings together tracks from releases between the years 2001 and 2016- though it plays well enough as a full/ consistent release, as there are no great stylistic jumps occurring here. The tracks featured here come from the following releases: I Travel CDr (Circle Of Shit, 2001), How It Ends 10" (White Rabbit, 2002), All But One 12" (Old Europa Cafe, 2016).

The release opens with the slow feasting static layers-meets- bayed overloaded vocals of “Filth”. Moving on we have scrubbing buzz topped with ranting swearing shouts of “So Pretty”. There’s the curling grey drone ‘n’ pop of “Every Day I Die” which features both vein-bulging bays and creepy whispers. Or the buzzing churning meets the forking wash of “Curfew” that's topped with almost blending and blurring into the noise 
hissed & hazed vocals.  With the CD playing out with the hopeless pitch swarm meets grainy churn 'n' bay of “Charades” which is topped with still angered, though slightly more dramatically arranged vocals.

Less Travelled offers up very much meat and potatoes PE; though that’s not meant as a negative, as there is still enough variation and deranged flair present though-out the collection to make it worthwhile. So, a release very much for the already converted, and it’s nice to see a (relatively) recent release from Slogun, who haven’t released anything new since 2019.