Slowness

Artist: Slowness.
Album: Hopeless but Otherwise EP.
Record Label: Ourselves Records.
Rating: 4.7 / 5
Reviewer: Rob Turner.

(Check out the brand new interview with the band HERE!)

The only reason this is getting a 4.7/5 rating (rather than higher) is because I wanted to leave room for Slowness to grow into an LP. Hopeless But Otherwise is an amazingly solid four song EP, and I want more!

The first track, "Black & White", sets the stage for what you know will be a great listening adventure. The chiming guitar into solid bass and drums, then the almost hypnotic vocals (the lyrics are very smart and well thought out, with an overall sense of warmth) .


Slowness. Black & White.


The second track, "Duck and Cover ", is my personal favorite off this EP.
(Enough said!)

The third track, " Slow Boat", (which was also included on the Rock Back for Japan compilation (volume two, track four) is a real earworm! It will absolutely make you chant the lyrics: "Project the past... Protect the future..." like you have undiagnosed Turrett's.



Slowness. Slow Boat.

The fourth and final track, "Little King ", is the soundtrack to the sweetest shoegaze dreams you could ever want to have...(which is why we included it on The First 100,00 Compilation, of course!).

I know Slowness is a band to keep an eye on in the future!


For further investigation:

REVIEW BY ROB TURNER. - When the Sun Hits

Slowness, based in California, consists of three members - Geoffrey Scott: guitars & vocals, Julie Lynn: bass, vocals & keys, and Scott Putnam: drums & vocals. The trio have been called "a gleaming jewel in San Francisco's indie tiara" (by Signal to Noise), and we can certainly see why! Slowness is a relatively new band to hit When The Sun Hits' radar (shame on us!), but as soon as we heard their hypnotic drone-pop, we all immediately fell in love and demanded they give us a track for The First 100,000 Compilation or ELSE. Ok, we asked nicely, but that is how excited we were about them! Their EP, Hopeless But Otherwise (which was just reviewed by Rob Turner HERE) blew us away. And that, gentle gazers, is how their beautiful track, "Little King", became the compilation closer, and the story of how WTSH fell in love with the music of Slowness. Cheers.

How and when was the band formed?

JULIE: Geoff and I had been playing music together, informally, for about nine years, so we finally decided to form a band and make a record.

GEOFFREY: About three years ago Jules and I edited a movie together. We knew we didn’t want to collaborate that way anymore but we worked well together, so decided to put our heads together with music instead. We asked our friend Erik to drum on some demos with us, which eventually turned into recording the EP with Monte. We did two or three gigs in SF and did a US tour.

Can you tell us what the band has been working on and what you've got forthcoming in the near future (new releases, tour, etc)?

JULIE: We’ve begun working on a new record with Scott Putnam on drums. He’s also brought a wonderful harmony element to the vocals. Sean Eden (Luna) will add some guitars on it. He also played on a 7” single that we hope to press in time for our shows this summer in NY and DC with Dead Leaf Echo. This will be our first vinyl, so were pretty excited about it. We plan to put the new record out early next year, and support it with a European tour in June 2012.

Do you consider Slowness's music to be part of the current shoegaze/dream pop scene, or any scene? Defining one's sound by genre can be tiresome, but do you feel that the band identifies closely with any genre? How do you feel about genres in music, in a general sense?

GEOFFREY: We get labeled as shoegaze, which is fine, but we don’t feel confined to that. We do stare at our instruments, for lack of technical ability, but not at our shoes. We never labeled ourselves as such and turn red-in-the-face embarrassed whenever someone asks: “what kind of music do you play?” When we are in the mood to describe ourselves, we feel most comfortable calling ourselves drone pop, which is no established genre at all.

What do you think of modern shoegaze/dream pop/psychedelia artists, any favorites?

JULIE: I spend more time listening to Duke Ellington, Morrissey, The Gogo’s and Sonic Youth. But I do like the bands we’re playing with a lot. Screen Vinyl Image, Dead Leaf Echo, Sky Drops, Tied to the Branches, and Moonbell.

What is the most important piece of gear for your sound? Any particular guitars/pedals/amps that you prefer?

GEOFFREY: I can never find the right guitars, pedals or amps, so I buy stuff and then sell it or trade it and then repeat the process. It’s really annoying and expensive.

How do you feel about the state of the music industry today? There is no doubt a massive change underway; how do you see it and do you feel it’s positive at all?

JULIE: It’s changing so fast, it’s hard not to feel behind. This new DIY world has helped us sell our music in Lithuania, Chile, South Africa, Italy, China and a bunch of other countries. There’s something really positive about having a connection with people all over the world. On the whole, it’s positive, but also exhausting. There’s only so much you can do, especially when you have to work for a living.

When it comes to label releases versus DIY/bandcamp and the like, what is your stance, if any?

JULIE: We have done everything DIY so far, and that works, but we wouldn’t say no to some help. DIY is very cool, because you’re directly involved with everything and know that you can get it done yourself. The negative part of doing it all ourselves is that it can put a squeeze on playing.

Do you prefer vinyl, CD, cassette tape or mp3 format when listening to music? Do you have any strong feelings toward any of them?

GEOFFREY: We buy records and used CDs, the latter of which are great because they are not hip and everyone has shed their collections, so we get to continue building a music library somewhat frugally. Downloads are fine, especially high-quality mp3s and those which come with vinyl. But file-sharing low-grade mp3s is a bummer, unless it’s Metallica.

What artists (musicians or otherwise) have most influenced your work?

GEOFFREY: We’re all music fanatics. Too many to name.

Can you tell us a little about what you are currently into (books, films, art, bands, etc)?

GEOFFREY: Nikki Sixx’s Heroin Diaries. Woody Allen’s new movie.

JULIE: I steal other people’s books from time to time and read them very slowly.

GEOFFREY: Yeah, mine.

If you had to choose one Slowness track that was the ultimate definition of your sound, which would it be and why?

JULIE: Slowboat, because it has some sort of balance in the lyrics between looking both at what is dark and light in life.

GEOFFREY: When we were writing it, it went through a very strange transition at one point. It had this really bad, cheesy metal riff, and then Jules came in with the new bass line, and it changed everything.

Can you tell us a little about the band’s song writing process?

JULIE: Geoff usually comes up with the foundation on guitar and vocals. Then we start coming up with parts for bass and drums. Keyboards usually don’t come until we record.

GEOFFREY: For every 10 songs we come up with, two or three stick. Sometimes, a song will linger around like a hanger-on for a year or so, and we’ll play it as part of our live set, or we’ll try to record it three different ways, four different times, until we say, “Song, would you please go away?” And then the song walks away and we feel liberated.

What is the band’s goal for 2011?

GEOFFREY: To continue getting Hopeless but Otherwise out there. To get the 7” pressed and distributed. To finish the new record and have it ready to put out the first day of 2012. And to book the 2012 European Tour.

JULIE: We may also try to incorporate keyboards into our live set.

What is your philosophy (on life), if any, that you live by?

GEOFFREY: Despair is the devil.

JULIE: Don’t let the turkeys get you down.


*Top two photos are credited to Brad Wise and Aaron Campbell, respectively.

Posted by When The Sun Hits - All things shoegaze. at 3:00 PM - When the Sun Hits

Slowness first came to my attention when they responded to a comment I left on another band’s facebook page. Curious, I clicked on their profile picture and discovered, first, that Slowness is a Shoegaze band, and then, after listening to their debut EP Hopeless but Otherwise, that Slowness is a very good Shoegaze band. Two days later, I posted Vibrato 11.04, a compilation featuring “Black & White” – the first song on their EP, and now, a couple days after that, I am interviewing two of the band members: Geoffrey Scott and Julie Lynn. There really doesn’t seem to be anything slow about these guys.

The Interview
After a few minutes of trying to use an inelligant, three-sided Gmail chat in the manner I suggested, Geoffrey must have figured out how to use Gmail’s group chat function. Suddenly three people in three different locations were all participating in the same chat. What follows is more or less what they had to say.

NWs: First off, thanks for doing this interview. Thanks, too, for letting me use “Black & White” on Vibrato 11.04.
Geoffrey: Thank you, Rob, for including us.
NWs: My pleasure.

NWs: I believe I read that Slowness became the band’s name not all that long before the EP was released in 2010. Is that right?
Geoffrey: Yes, we had a couple of other names before finally arriving at Slowness. They never really felt right at the gut level, but Slowness did.
NWs: Interesting. Who came up with that name?
Geoffrey: We lifted it off a Milan Kundera novel.
NWs: What were some of the previous names?
Geoffrey: Mothers of the Disappeared and Past & Future.
Julie: We came up with those names because we needed to have a name to play out, but they both always felt a bit goofy to us.
NWs: Isn’t the first the title of a U2 song from The Joshua Tree?
Geoffrey: Yes, and we obviously still hadn’t found what we were looking for.
NWs: Good one.

NWs: Alright, now you have a name you like, so introduce me to the band. Tell me a little bit about who plays what instruments, how the songs get written, that sort of thing.
Julie: Geoffrey and I collaborate in writing many of the songs, though he writes all of the lyrics and plays a major role in the arranging and producing. I play bass, keys, and do backing vocals. And we’re really happy to have Scott Putnam playing drums and doing backing vocals now.
NWs: So, who sings “Black & White”?
Geoffrey: We both sing together most of the way through that one.
NWs: I thought it was basically female vocals, but whenever I venture a guess, I invariably get it wrong and end up looking foolish. I have been burned often enough that I no longer care to speculate openly.
Julie: Ha ha! From what gets thrown on the record player, I know how many falsetto singers have influenced Geoffrey.
Geoffrey: After several failed attempts, I hesitated for so long to start a new band, mainly because I always envisioned female vocals accompanying mine on my records, but couldn’t make it happen. It took finding Julie, a summer of finding my own, new voice, and Monte Vallier’s production to achieve that. Now, Scott adds beautiful harmonies to our new songs, so we’re feeling good about our next record, which we’re also working on with Monte.
Julie: Yes, while Monte is not in the band as such, he has played a crucial role in making our music.
NWs: Geoffrey, what did finding your own, new voice entail?
Geoffrey: What I had done, vocally, prior to Slowness did not work for me. There was a difference between what I heard in my head and what came out on tape. So, when I spent a summer in the country, house-sitting, I had the luxury of standing in a room alone everyday for hours, with no one but the dog listening to me as I experimented with different techniques. I just started doing and re-doing demos until the voice sounded right. Being alone and losing most of my inhibitions freed me up to try different things until I finally found the sound I was looking for.

The members of Slowness clearly enjoying their interview with NWshoegazer.

NWs: Are you guys Bay Area natives? How long have you known one another? Have you been in other bands?
Julie: Geoffrey and I have known each other well for more than ten years. Neither of us is from the Bay Area. He’s from upstate New York, and I’m from Canada originally, but grew up around the globe. Slowness is my first band.
NWs: Around the globe? Tell me more.
Julie: I was born in Canada, but then moved to Kenya, then Mexico, and then Hawaii. My dad was a Research Ecologist, and since there wasn’t much work back in those days for ecologists, he found work where he could, and we kept moving. I always went to public schools and just had to adapt to being thrown into new worlds. In a lot of ways, it was a good way to grow up, though I’m sometimes envious of people who grew up in a certain place, knowing their friends for most of their lives.
NWs: Yeah, changing schools, especially mid-year was the worst. My dad’s from Buffalo, but he has lived in Niagara Falls as well. So, I’ve been up in Geoffrey’s neck of the woods.
Geoffrey: We were both born in that region within a few hours drive of each other. I went to Niagara Falls when I was thirteen. That was wild. I kept picturing people going over in barrels and inner-tubes.
Julie: I’ve never been, but I love going back to the Northeast. One thing we don’t have out here in San Francisco is real seasons. We’ve been talking about doing a tour in Japan this winter so we can get some snow.
NWs: Did you know each other back East?
Julie: No. We met out here through mutual friends, and, over the years, we’ve done a few other collaborations that worked very well. From my perspective, it seems like the experience of the collaboration is as important as the music. It has to be cooperative and fun. Which it is.
Geoffrey: Otherwise, forget it. I joined my first band as a drummer when I was thirteen and have been stumbling through them ever since. My first guitarist wanted to take it outside to fight when we couldn’t agree on the chorus in a Judas Priest song. The last meaningful project I was involved in, before Slowness, was playing guitar on tour with [the] caseworker.

NWs: How and when did you come together and decide to form the band that became Slowness.
Geoffrey: Three years ago, when [the] caseworker was in the process of moving away from SF to different parts of the world, I was left with a bunch of guitar sketches. Demos, I guess you’d call them. One day, Julie gave them a listen and was like, “well, let’s dust them off and make them into something.”
I was fortunate to be house-sitting in the country at the time. There were chickens and other animals, so my friend Erik Gross would come and help me fix the fences and stuff. The place had a big living room, so I asked Erik to bring his drums up, which he did. We set them up in the living room and recorded a few songs; Julie engineered most of them. She bought a bass, started learning how to play, and laid down the bass tracks. The dog would bark at the drums; you can hear that on the demos.
NWs: But not on the EP. I know [the] caseworker; I have These Weeks Should Be Remembered.
Julie: I love that album.
Geoffrey: Monte’s on that one. I was a fan of Half Film in the late 90s. Then they disappeared and came back on the scene as [the] caseworker and released These Weeks Should Be Remembered. I went to their gigs, got to know them, and they became good friends of ours. Conor suggested we record with Monte. He also played guitar on the EP and helped us mix it. We did about twelve songs, which we shaved down to six and then down to four. Then the legendary Kramer contacted us on MySpace, said he liked what we were doing, and offered to master our mixes. We were delighted to work with him.
NWs: You know, I couldn’t believe it when I read that Kramer mastered your EP. I think I owe the man an apology. I have always held him responsible for those superfluous and sometimes annoying bits of noise found in some Galaxie 500 songs, but there is nothing like that in your EP; it’s seamless. It’s like that scene in Amadeus where Mozart explains to the Emperor that his music has just as many notes as it needs, no more, no less.
Geoffrey: We are editors more than anything. We produce a lot of annoying bits ourselves and have to step back and say “no to that one!”
Kramer was great in providing atmospherics for Galaxie 500, and was as ground-breaking as an indie producer as Dean Wareham was as a songwriter, and as the band was at doing it their way without anyone’s intervention. They only had Kramer make it better, which is what he did when he mastered our EP.
NWs: I cannot argue with that. I’m sorry for doubting you, Kramer. For my penance, I am going to listen to The Big Sell-Out and meditate on your greatness.

NWs: I’d say that your music was clearly Shoegaze, but it doesn’t remind me of anyone from the original scene. Who do you think you most sound like? Who are your influences?
Julie: We didn’t really start putting ourselves into that category until it seemed like everyone else was saying that we were Shoegaze.
NWs: Well, if sounding like MBV, JaMC, Ride, or Slowdive is necessary in order to be Shoegaze, you aren’t, but I still think you are.
Geoffrey: We do love that stuff, but no more so than Miles Davis or R.E.M.. Julie’s mad about Django Reinhardt, and Scott’s crazy about Ween; I’m still in love with Rush. So there you go.
NWs: Got to love those Ayn Rand inspired lyrics. My favorite Rush album is Subdivisions, what’s yours?
Julie: I came to Rush late, because I was so in love with Post-Punk when I was young that I disdained any type of Metal. I’ve had a lot of catching up to do.
Geoffrey: Signals is my favorite, too. But equally Grace Under Pressure, as I saw them on that tour – my first concert as a young lad without parental guidance, and it was an out-of-body experience.
NWs: Doh! I meant Signals. I was having a discussion with a Last.fm friend, and I told her that I don’t sing Shoegaze songs in the shower; I am more likely to burst out with, “Though his mind is not for rent…”
Geoffrey: “…to any god or government.”
Julie: I don’t sing Shoegaze in the shower either. I guess ’cause I don’t know what the lyrics are half the time. A lot of the time, I love the vocals as just another instrument.
NWs: That is exactly how I feel; I don’t always understand them, but the lyrics have got to be there. With Shoegaze, I can usually only remember the words while singing along.
Julie: I think the new EP we’re recording shows more of a Metal influence than was evident on Hopeless but Otherwise.
Geoffrey: Yes, we will be banned from all Shoegaze websites when it comes out in the fall.

NWs: I was thinking that there is some irony in the choice of Slowness for the band’s name; things seem to happen pretty fast with you guys. Some of the bands I’ve been in contact with have yet to play a single show, others are hoping to raise enough money thru Bandcamp to finance a release on CD or vinyl, while you have put out an EP that Kramer mastered, toured the U.S., and all four of your songs have been turned into videos. How do you explain this?
Geoffrey: We’ve been together for almost three years, and as of now, we have only a four-song EP to show for it. We’ve toured because we chose to, and we pay for everything ourselves. We’re not waiting for someone else to help us. The filmmakers who made the videos are friends of ours who do what they do out of love, not for money or anything else. Kramer is a mystery and a blessing. We don’t expect anything and don’t think we deserve anything, but we’re in love with what we’re doing, and every once in a while, we get a little surprise that delights us.
NWs: I’ll have to disagree with you on the deserving part. I like the fact that you distilled twelve songs down to four, because those four songs are excellent. I am very much a quality over quantity kind of guy, and I like your philosophy in regard to doing things for yourselves. I suspect that if you weren’t worth knowing, you wouldn’t have the friends to make videos, etc..
Geoffrey: Marty, Brad, and Michael (the filmmakers) are all friends of Julie’s. She’s the one who gets things off the ground. She booked the tour and built our website.

Video by B. S. Wise

NWs: Tell me about the tour; where did you go, and what are some of the best stories that came out of it? I am particularly interested in your visit to Portland. I hate that I missed the show, but I had not yet become aware of you, and I have no idea where that venue is; I’ve never heard of it. What was it like? Who did you play with? Will you ever come back?
Julie: The tour was a very interesting experience in lots of ways. We went through Denver, all the way to Connecticut, and back. We had many wonderful experiences with the people at the shows and with the bands who played with us.
The booker and crowds at the Fishtank in Denver were fantastic, and we definitely want to go back there. It is a very underground scene, where it is clear that everyone is at the show for the music. As soon as we arrived in Denver – after a long detour through the Sierra’s – complete strangers started helping us out. It was strange to go from there to Texas, where we had several near death experiences.
In two days, we had two car accidents that were beyond our control, and in the second one, hours before my birthday, I almost got flattened against our van by another vehicle that blindly backed into us. Always nice to remember to appreciate being alive! Right after that experience, we arrived in Granbury, Texas, at Studio 216, where the owners of this great little, off-the-map venue took excellent care of us. They even had a few birthday cakes handy (though not originally intended for me).
We thought we were out of the woods until we entered Tennessee in the wee hours of the morning. When we stopped at a little gas station to refuel, we told the woman at the register about the lunar eclipse going on outside. She had on a T-shirt with “Welcome to America. Now speak English!” printed on it, and she looked at us like we were crazy for caring about an eclipse. Later that night, we played an open air show in the backwoods of Tennessee, with every variety of moonshine being offered to us.
New York City was great, and we really enjoyed playing with Dead Leaf Echo, who we’ll tour with this summer. We stopped at another really cool venue in Pittsburgh, Garfield Artworks. Great crowd. After seeing the Badlands for the first time, we stopped to watch the World Cup Final in Wyoming, and ended up in a bar where we had to wonder if we’d make it out of a Meth nightmare. We almost played with For Against in Lincoln, Nebraska, but the schedules didn’t work out.
Portland was great. Our friends Foreign Cinema came up from SF to play with us. We’ll definitely get back there, possibly in June.
NWs: That’s good to hear.

NWs: About Europe and Japan. Are the dates and venues set? Have you been invited to play shows in Japan?
Julie: We’ve been talking to some bands in Japan and just thinking about where we want to go.
Geoffrey: Monte shared our EP with some labels there, and we have a few connections, so we’ll see where it goes. As for Europe, we know that’s where our fans are. The first person to buy our EP was in Rome, and we have some booking connections there too.
NWs: The Dead Leaf Echo shows, will those be in the States?
Geoffrey: Yes, we’ll do Boston, New York, Philadelphia, D.C., and Baltimore with them in July.

NWs: At the moment, you’re in the studio making another EP: For Those Who Wish to See the Glass Half-Full. Will that come out before your trip to Europe?
Geoffrey: We’re not sure. We’ve had a tendency in the past to rush things along, and it never works. And the production on the new one is getting more and more interesting, perhaps we’ll use some strings and really dub it out. We’re going to take a day to mix each song, then master, then package, then promote, then… So we’ll see. We just want to go play in these places, whether or not we have it done.
NWs: Again, I admire the philosophy.
Geoffrey: There’s no other way to go about it.
NWs: Oh, there is; it just doesn’t yield the best results.
Geoffrey: Right. Especially these days. It’s so confusing, because everything now is so instant, and we expect immediate results. But we’ve been around the block enough times to know that slow is the way to go.
NWs: Hence, Slowness.
Geoffrey: I guess we chose the right name.
NWs: It certainly seems that way.

At this point, we agreed that we were all hungry and had covered a lot of ground in a very enjoyable chat, so we decided to stop here.

Hopeless but Otherwise by Slowness
©2010 Slowness

My Rating: ?????
iPod Songs: “Black & White”, “Duck & Cover”, and “Slowboat”

The only reason “Little King” didn’t make it to my iPod is that it is over nine minutes long. If you like Shoegaze, you’ll want to get this EP. Amazingly, during the month of March, Slowness is giving it away in a high quality, Variable Bit-Rate MP3 format at no cost to you. Simply click on the cover art shown above – a link to the band’s website – and, from there, navigate to the music page and click on the link to CDBaby.

*This post takes its name from the first song on Voyager One‘s From The New Nation Of Long Shadows.
- NWshoegazing

***** Interview with Geoffrey Scott - Slowness *****
Q. When did Slowness form, tell us about the beginning…

A. Slowness formed with no name during the summer of 2008 in a house I was house-sitting in, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Julie was encouraging me to turn some guitar sketches into actual songs. And our friend Erik would come up to help me with the yard and the animals, and he brought his drums up and we started doing demos in this great big living room.

Q. What are the band’s influences?

A. There are so many. Aside from the obvious independent-alternative rock, we all love jazz and ambient and some classical and electronic experimental stuff too.

Q. Tell us about the recording process for the debut EP?

A. We shared our demos with our friend Conor and he suggested we record with Monte Vallier. We went in with about 11 songs. "Duck an Cover" we engineered on our own, in our rehearsal space, and did overdubs and vocals in our apartments. In the end, seven seemed to work, but after we mastered and pressed a bunch for a US tour, we came home feeling that only four really represented us well. So we re-mastered with Kramer and did a new pressing with new artwork and all. Now we're finally really happy with it.


Q. Make a list of your top five albums from all time.

1. R.E.M. "Reconstruction of the Fables"
2. The Cure "Disintegration"
3. Stereolab "Mars Audiac Quintet"
4. Spiritualized "Lazer Guided Melodies"
5. The Smiths "The Smiths"

Q. Tell us about playing live.

A. We love it. We don't play much in San Francisco because we don't see ourselves as a local band. We did the tour last year and it was great playing every night for three and a half weeks. You get so much better as a band, and it's the best 40 minutes of your day. We just played in March for the first time in nine months with our new drummer, Scott Putnam, and it felt great. Our best shows tend to be in small, dingy basement-like places full with about 60 people. We'll do a mini-tour in July between New York and Washington, DC.

Q. What do you think about the classic shoegaze era?

A. It's very strange because I started playing the guitar during the height of that era, but I was starting to write songs, you know, cheesy stuff with three chords and the truth. In other words, nothing shoegaze. But somehow something shoegazey started coming out when I started recording demos on a two-track cassette boom-box. But Slowness never sat down and went, "okay, let's be a shoegaze band." Scott and I are metalheads at the core, and Julie is a porch musician.

Q. Which new bands do you recommend?

A: I'm not really one to have a pulse on the latest thing. When I buy records, I'm mostly digging into the past and gathering what I missed, you know, like For Against or Spectrum, or even super early Rolling Stones. There is so much great stuff that snuck by me, probably because I was the oldest sibling and didn't have many older friends. Most modern music I hear, that has broken through to indie stardom, as in the latest Pitchfork craze, I'm not crazy about, but then there's so much good stuff out there. It's a bit overwhelming in the new age of digital distribution. Most of what we like are bands we've come to know in San Francisco or while touring, like Foreign Cinema, Dead Leaf Echo, and Moonbeams.


Q. Could you explain the songs from "Hopeless but Otherwise" and your inspirations to compose them?

A. "Black & White" I guess is both personal and political. I guess I just realized at the time that the last eight years of life in the US had been been pretty shitty. Ever since 9/11 things have been weird, and things still don't seem right. But then I suppose it was just a case of me growing up. As if dropping the bomb in 1945, or the Holocaust, or the Rape of Nanking were any lighter. "Duck & Cover" is about someone getting out of your life because of choice or circumstance, and you suddenly realize that the relationship was actually poisoning you at the time. "Slowboat" somehow morphed into something completely different than how it began, basically because of Julie's bass line. Thank heavens for it. I had all these verses, but then we stepped back and thought about repeating just the one phrase, plus a few asides in the second verse. It's about the need to change our entire way of life. To start over, rebuild and, god-forbid, actually take care of each other as a society. But before that we would need to see the footage of all the destruction we've caused up until now. Unfortunately, American public schools generally don't do a good enough job actually educating our youth about what's really gone on in our shared history. Take the details of the Civil Rights Movement and the 100 years of Reconstruction and Jim Crow laws that led up to it. Only a few people get educated on subjects like these growing up, so we have a public that is essentially ignorant, or in denial. "Little King" is about keeping your sense of humor amidst all this dark stuff.

Q. Which songs by other bands would you like to do cover versions of?

A. We've only ever performed two covers, but in my fantasy world we'd have these in our arsenal: "A Short Term Effect" by The Cure, "Silver Rider" by Low, "Kahoutek" by R.E.M., "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" by the Smiths, "Leave Them All Behind" by Ride-- but we'll probably do none of them since we're just trying to write and arrange new songs, and practice what we have so far.

Q. What are the plans for the future?

A. We are in the studio now working on what was supposed to be a follow-up EP but we think it might be turning into a full-length LP. It's about half finished. We're doing the tour in July and we're all spending the summer months on the East Coast, mainly in New York. Then we'll come back in September and continue working on the record. It should be done by November or December, but who knows with these things. We're also planning to tour Europe and Japan in 2012.

Q. Any important news to tell us…

A. We have Sean Eden (Luna) playing on a couple tracks for the new LP. We're lucky we bumped into him at Maxwell's last summer at a Feelies show. Oh yeah, and I've written two songs with Julie's six year-old daughter. We only need to wait another 15years before she can go on tour with us and play keyboards. Until then, we'll probably use a few magic tricks when we play live.

Thanks Geoffrey.... - The Blog that Celebrates Itself

Okay okay okay okay….if you read NBD every day you’ve noticed that I’ve been dormant. Well I apologize. My MacBook died. Literally. Photos, music, documents, all locked away behind my hibernating Mac. It was my good friends at Keane Mac repair that 7xed my Mac and brought NBD back to life. So happy today and so happy that I met a place that does something well! Cheers to you my friends!

Coincidently, I’ve been waiting almost a week to post about our new favorite Arizona Turk derived obsession….SLOWNESS! Yes it explains my posting strategy for April, but their music was well worth the wait. You know we love the local music scene in SF, but we’ve never put limits on our posts. We just find it fun to feature bands from our own music backyard, this market for some reason took a shit in the 90's and 00's and it’s just now having it’s moment…again. Drone rock can be fun, the shoegaze theme hasn’t really worn thin, but it’s the hipster version of a jam bands. It’s just darker arenas, less patchouli, and heavier distortion. We like to stick our nose down to our shoes to the Phishes of the world, but let’s be honest if you give them an amp and hair in their face you have Phish goes shoegaze. That being said Slowness takes the best of the genre and delivers a perfect EP. Harmonies, wailing whining guitars and eerie vocals. I liken their sound to one of our faves The Raveonettes, even Autoluxie a bit. Really a great band and I’d expect to hear Geoffrey Scott, Julie Lynn and Scott Putnam bouncing around the country and on the festival circuit very very soon. - NewBandDay

The new EP from San Francisco’s Slowness, Hopeless but Otherwise, is an intense trip beyond polar cer­tainty and into a maze of melan­choly. Truth is bet­ter in color, as the open­ing track “Black & White” declares, but it’s also messier that way: The band uses beau­ti­ful shoegaze gui­tar tex­tures laid over omi­nous bass marches and dri­ving drums to take the lis­tener down some sub­con­sious back alleys we all usu­ally avoid.

While the sonic scenery may be dark, the band never leaves the listener’s side, guid­ing the way with points of cathar­sis to reveal the beauty in dis­com­fort. Lyrically, Slowness walk the line between the polit­i­cal and per­sonal, with the words equally fit­ting to a rela­tion­ship as they would be to a protest; anger mix­ing with sober reflec­tion. They call for reshap­ing insti­tu­tions and decry “evil schem­ing lies,” but then rec­om­mend a “reck­on­ing and levity.”

Not that you can really hear the words. The ethe­real, male/female har­monies by bassist Julie Lynn and gui­tarist Geoffrey Scott are more an addi­tional tex­ture than mouth­piece. (Erik Gross plays drums on the record but the band has since found a new drum­mer, Scott Putnam.)

The over­all impres­sion of this com­plex EP is that the band is just begin­ning. In some ways they’ve barely started on what promises to be an epic jour­ney into drones unknown. I highly rec­om­mend spend­ing some qual­ity time with the songs and check­ing Slowness out next time they play. They are a gleam­ing jewel in San Francisco’s indie tiara. - The Signal and Noise

As we finish up the nomination process for our upcoming Deli SF 2010 Best Emerging Artist Readers Poll, we are proud to announce the bands selected from our Sonicbids submission page.
Check back again soon to begin voting on your favorite SF act. - The San Francisco Deli

San Francisco band Slowness existed for a full year and a half before being known as Slowness – or anything else for that matter. Coming together in the summer of 2008 (while guitarist/vocalist Geoffrey Scott and drummer EKG were house-sitting and chicken farming(!) together,) it wasn’t until roughly 6 months ago that the band even had a name, and the name itself reflects the pace that certain band processes, such as finding a name everyone can agree on, can take. Regardless of how the band, rounded out by bassist/vocalist Julie Lynn, feels about its progression in the past, its future appears to be anything but glacial. In support of their new self-titled debut EP, Slowness is embarking on a nearly month-long tour that touches both coasts, have plans to release a full length by Christmas, and have already caught the ears of a legendary producer.

Hot Congress: What prompted your recent name change?
Geoffrey Scott: The recent name change happened because, for one, we just chose Past and Future so we could get this ball rolling. We literally sat around for 18 months with no idea of a band name. Anytime anyone brought one to the table, we’d all start laughing! Then we chose Past and Future, without really checking, and then when we put our stuff into Itunes, the album work from a German band, Past and Future got connected to our songs! So back to the drawing board. We chose Slowness because this whole process of being in a band, and getting half-way decent for performance, and to record something half-way listenable is a SLOW process….

What’s the best thing about the San Francisco music scene right now?
The best thing about the San Francisco music scene, for us, is the really great bands we’ve met just recently. These really nice people who have wonderful music like Foreign Cinema and The Skeletal System and Sunbeam Rd. We’re touring with them on the final leg of this tour, up in the Pacific Northwest. Otherwise, we don’t necessarily feel connected to the San Francisco music scene. But we love the Wooden Shjips. And Aquarius Records is the greatest record store on the planet.

You’ve decided to skip Arizona on this tour because of their recent anti-immigration rulings. What led to this decision, and do you consider yourselves to be a political band?
The Arizona thing is a real disappointment. A true set-back, in terms of human progress. We don’t take a strong stand either way, regarding immigration, as it’s very complex. But, we’re a nation of immigrants, and it wasn’t our land to begin with, and we just think that immigration is a smoke screen for greater evils like outsourcing. And the way the governor of Arizona has conducted herself is appalling, and we were inspired by the Phoenix Suns owner and team and the way they protested. But honestly, we’re not a political band, but some of this stuff does get covered in the lyrics. We’re pretty middle-of-the-road- people and tend to look at things as neither black or white.

Your new EP was mastered with the legendary Kramer, how’d that come about?
Kramer actually contacted us. We were pretty surprised and honored by that. We befriended him on myspace, and the next thing you know, there he is asking if we need anything mixed or mastered. And we did! We’re huge fans of his, especially what he did with Low and Galaxie 500. We were lucky also to work with Monty [Vallier - producer, Swell, Jet Black Crayon, [the] Caseworker,] and when Conor Jonathan was still in the country before the Caseworker dispersed all over the world, we were very lucky to have his guitar playing and experience in the studio with mixing. - Hot Congress

"SF’s new indie fashion Slowness comes though the fog in a radiant beam of soothing audio adjustment." - The New York Deli