THE SLOW JAM: PAST AND FUTURE

1. Michael Rother, played with Neu!, Harmonia, Cluster, and briefly Kraftwerk, is a prime stone-granite father of Krautrock. His first solo album from 1976, Flammende Herzen (Flaming Hearts) features Can's drummer, Jaki Liebezeit. Its romantic mood makes it a candidate for a new German electronic music subgenre, call it yacht-kraut-rock. (Das Boot rock?)
We offer the track Zyklodrom based on the following insight from Rother from Herzen's liner notes:

"The beginning of Zyklodrom is slowed down. We often used to switch the speed of the tape machine to create a special atmosphere...It was quite normal to work that way. I think most music sounds better when it is slowed down. I experience that often. The music suddenly has a new magic. Maybe because the sound is further away from reality."

MICHAEL ROTHER - ZYKLODROM




2. New York DJ team Rub-N-Tug's mix for the aNYthing clothing line. It is screwed. Unlike other variants of slow DJ music, however, like cosmic disco, this mix doesn't focus on slow in its drifting, soothing modality. There is no smooth sailing on a large, glistening vessel. This is slow in its queasy, decadent, grating mode. A teeth-gritting totter from side to side, waiting for the spell to pass. In a sense it's an electronic counterpart to RK's 'Adam'. It doesn't really have a beard, in the traditional sense. The beard of this mix is a wino scraggle.
There also are no tracks listed. There is open debate as to whether this mix is curated or solely original material.

RUB N TUG - BETTER WITH A SPOONFUL OF LEATHER