The bristol sound, made in Switzerland. Zurich collective who killed sloan reminds the beauty of the mid 90’s sensuous rhythms with their debut EP keep to the left here, that is more than just a fresh take on Trip hop. Read our discussion with the band below.
Describe your sound in 3 words
Spherical, cineastic and energetic.
Tell us a few things about your new project. What is its main idea?
Actually, for “keep to the left here” we had no conception at all of how it should turn out in the end.
When we met almost 4 years ago, we just naively started to collect our ideas and tried to find and define ourselves as a collective.
We always made sure that everyone was able to express his or her own visions and have taken plenty of time to combine the different expectations and ideas in an innovative way.
Overall the EP turned out to be very personal. All the songs tell directly from life: regrets, dark desires or the confrontation with one’s own past.
It’s exciting that the instrumental either strongly underpins or contrasts with the lyrics.
Which is your most honest and personal lyric?
That’s difficult to tell. But if we had to pick one, it’d be Killfile.
It’s about the struggle to realize that the entire childhood was built on the ideology of others.
The title of the song sums it up pretty well: a killfile is – simply said – a file that uses patterns to ignore unwanted subjects.
So you only get the kind of information that fits into these patterns.
And this is how some people grow up to: extreme religious or political views without any chance to evolve themselves as an independent person.
And at some point they realize that they don’t even know who they really are or what they want in life.
This song tells about breaking away from the parental home and all the insecurity, anger and fear that comes along with this process.
Imagine we do a beginner’s guide to Trip-Hop. Which is in your opinion the most iconic Trip-Hop album ever produced and why?
That will always be an endless discussion. 😉
In our opinion, it should be either Mezzanine by Massive Attack or one of the first two albums by Portishead (Dummy, Portishead).
These records show how varied trip hop is. Mezzanine, for example, demonstrates that trip hop doesn’t only have to be reduced, calm and melancholic;
it can also be more intense or even brachial. Furthermore, these albums are absolutely timeless and somehow always correspond to the current zeitgeist.
What made you gravitate towards Trip-Hop?
Everyone of us likes a different style of music, but we all have been influenced by electronic sound, especially by 90s Trip-Hop.
This genre has such a wide range that all our musical requirements can be united in it:
the closeness to the sound, complex and unexpected compositions, melancholy and calm vocals paired with something energetic always pushing forward.
It’s such a promising and constantly evolving kind of music that (in our opinion) doesn’t exist elsewhere.
Which book should we read while listening to your music?
It could be very difficult to read a book while listening to all these ups and downs, climaxes and the very present vocals.
Maybe an erotically themed piece of literature would fit well? 😉
But hopefully our sound is so engaging that you eventually forget about the book.
What isn’t a crime but should be?
Selfie-Sticks, autotune, “chat and cut”, littering, people who leave a public toilet in a condition… well you know what we mean… 🙂
What happened to Sloan? What is the story behind your name?
The name is based on the american film noir and thriller Shock Corridor.
The plot mainly takes place in a mental institution where an inmate named Sloan is murdered.
The question is now, who killed sloan? Watch the movie – it’s absolutely worth it! 😉
Thank you!
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