Are you ready for a bewitching pop adventure? Morr Music is releasing Slow Steve's Adventures, the debut album by Ex-Fenster member Rémi Letournelle. Following a 7" split single on Berlin DIY label Späti Palace and Steps, a six-track EP released on Morr Music last year, »Adventures« is the first LP of the French man. His bubbling vintage synths (together with an impressive variety of instruments) will take you on a strange trip through imagined galaxies and secret deep-sea worlds. Call it weird, but this is amateur pop in all its glory, and the most natural outlet for Slow Steve. Think of Ariel Pink, John Maus, early Future Islands, old Krautrock luminaries or Arthur Russell – a whole school of alternative pop music that Rémi is very likely to join. Adventures is more than just an application.
In January 2015, he started working on the eleven songs that make up the album. While the »Steps« EP was mainly jams Rémi created in his room with a bit of pot, whiskey, Casios and a TR707, he got deeper into songwriting for his first LP. The songs were recorded with producer Tadklimp for 5 days in the Worm Studio in Rotterdam, using their many glorious vintage synthesizers, and in Tadklimp's studio in Berlin. Apart from Charley Vecten, who started Slow Steve with Rémi as a live duo back in 2012, most of the instrument parts on the record were written and performed by Rémi himself.
When Rémi moved to Berlin, he met psychedelic pop outfit and fellow Morr signees Fenster. Rémi has been part of their live shows as well as contributing to their first two albums. There are certain familiarities between the washed-out sound of Fenster and Slow Steve, but Adventures sees Rémi doing his own thing. He says »I had weird science fiction in mind, visions of Jules Verne drawings from the early 20th century and science fiction/action movies from the end of that same century. That’s why it's called Adventures: I’m picturing a kind of Indiana Jones going down to the bottom of the sea, to Lilliput and other crazy, weird worlds.« Song titles like »The Giant Spider Crab From Japan« literally imply that this is a cosmic synth dive into creepy depths, while in »Joséphine II (Rivière)« Rémi sends his two teenage nieces through the universe in some cute spacecraft. Elsewhere, you hear the inspiration that 70's French sci-fi movies and their experimental electronic scores had on Rémi, for instance in the blissful nostalgia reverberating in »Oscillation«. Even the sunshiny guitar pop and blurred synths of »Sloth« or »Bali« sooner or later end up in humorous excursions. All song structures seem to follow some secret rules - challenging but always easygoing.
»Adventures« does what it says on the sleeve: surprise and mesmerize, somewhat wild and spaced out. Welcome to the curious world of Slow Steve.
