Sloucho’s Debut Album, ‘NPC’: Bouncy, wobbly, and dreamy

Ireland’s very own Sloucho captures the essence of the UK electronic scene with his enticingly eclectic debut album, NPC. Without boxing himself into any one genre, the soundscapes encompass a mesmerising range of styles from garage to Latin-bass, to hip-hop and plenty more.

The lead single ‘Come Around’, featuring fellow Irishman Rory Sweeney, begins with an eerie atmosphere of ambience and vocals. It then turns into a heavy wobbler combining female and male back-and-forth vocal samples, and pulsating synth-basses to create a perfect club track that is both intimate and celebratory.

This is followed by ‘Brand New’ and ‘Super Maramu 2000’, making a fantastic stretch on the album, with Sloucho’s clean production style seamlessly fluctuating between genres. ‘Brand New’ is a wonderfully bouncy garage tune featuring k-caz and Emby. Other than the production, k-caz’s cadence stands out as a distinctive highlight of the track, and his second verse has an interesting mixing choice, which at first I wasn’t so sure about. After a few more listens the choice of the muddy vocals and multiple layers of k-caz delivery voice was vindicated and the track completes its aural journey in fine form. By the way, the video by Aisling Phelan is definitely worth a watch, with Phelan creating an amazing 3D Meta-human video in Unreal engine. That’s all I’ll say on the matter, you have to watch it for yourself.

‘Super Maramu 2000’ is another club-ready song, and has the drums to match a Latin-bass song with Sloucho’s signature, infectious vocal chops as seen on tracks such as ‘Slow Feet’ and ‘Watching Us’, which he has previously released on labels such as ‘Cloudcore’. Another tell-tale sign of a Sloucho vocal sample is the pitch will have either been dialed all the way up, or all the way down – no more, no less. But playing around with the pitch of the vocals as they swoop in and zoom out over the clear pin-drop beat certainly injects enough variation into the tracks to keep you on your toes.

These pitched vocals are all over the album from the very first track: ‘Mind Traveller’. Here, the music again moves the listener around its spaces, with a voice guiding you through the NPC thought process. The listener travels through the home fictional world of Sloucho as the “mind places to travel to places” over an ethereal atmospheric ambience and floaty synth pads, arriving at the final track with Yamagöchi-inspired title, ‘Lights On’. Here, Sloucho opts to sign off with a Frank Dukes-esque melody, which could’ve easily been a sample from the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time soundtrack under, you guessed it, dreamy, pitched up-and-down vocals.

Sloucho’s influence from Latin music is very apparent as Chilean-born, Dublin-based artist Vaticanjail delivers a verse on the track ‘Rocks’ with k-caz. This track made me think time and time again that I was receiving a FaceTime call due to Sloucho’s interpolation of the Apple ringtone – just a warning for unsuspecting listeners in advance. K-caz isn’t the only artist to appear twice on this album as Emby makes another appearance on the track ‘Two Thousands’ with Dublin artist Curtisy, to which unfortunately Emby’s chorus cadence doesn’t match the energy of the track. Curtisy’s guest verse manages to bring that energy back up, however.

‘Mutant’, with experimental artist Rhoshi, and ‘Make it Work’, are two tracks which show why Sloucho’s career trajectory and future will be written all over UK electronic music. These two tracks both sound industrial, and feel like a mutation of Sloucho’s previous releases into a dubby, robotic world of his own, with vocals sounding like they are trying to escape the traps and compression of a computer program being supported by growling basses push through the sound system.

If Sloucho’s album is anything to show the direction of where the electronic scene is heading, it is an exciting time to be a follower. The juxtaposition of the title NPC (Non-Playable Character), with the replayability of these tracks is an irony that should highlighted. Yet, this irony sings true to the listener’s feelings as Sloucho leads you through a sonic adventure you aren’t entirely in control of.