Q&A: The Slaps on genre-defying album ‘Mudglimmer’ and staying devoted to their music
FORMED IN CHICAGO AT DEPAUL UNIVERSITY — the trio of guitarist Rand Kelly, bassist Ramsey Bell, and drummer Josh Resing have been releasing music together as The Slaps since 2017. The band found great success growing their local profile, with audiences being captivated by their fusion of jazz, garage rock inspired by The Strokes, and influence from Chicago-native musicians. They recently announced their upcoming album, Mudglimmer, set for release on November 8th. We got to sit down with the band to discuss the new album, the different mediums that sparked creativity while working on it, and how they stayed in-tact in the face of hardship.
LUNA: First of all, thank you for taking the time to answer some questions for us! You just announced your new album Mudglimmer about a week ago, how are you feeling?
THE SLAPS: A great relief, content with the first round of release, anxious for the rest of it to drop, excited to play it live, glad that folks still love and support us.
LUNA: You’ve already released two singles off the album, “Mudglimmer” and “Compromised Dirt.” Without giving away too much, what can listeners expect from the remaining tracks on the album?
THE SLAPS: The album continues to expand on our genreless discography. A couple instrumental deep cuts, a deeper dive into our lyrical expressions. A couple portraits and narrative based songs. Still a strong sense of observational humor. I think most of all our listeners can expect the best out of us on this one. We’ve become better musicians and the way Hummingbird studios captured our playing is super true to its nature.
LUNA: You’ve cited a college class you took called Improv Scratch Orchestra as a source of inspiration for your work. Can you explain a bit of the class’ content and why it became such a notable influence on your work?
THE SLAPS: Josh and Rand took this class in their third year at DePaul (2019). It was most notably a place to let music speak for itself, as its own language. Discussing, expressing, problem solving, provoking, listening, questioning, concluding… all with music. Music however you want to play it. Not writing a song but exchanging and collaborating with intention. The ability to write songs is great, the class taught how to work outside of musical boundaries. The curriculum consisted of abstract scoring techniques and many hours of researching, listening and presenting.
LUNA: I read that you endured a lot of hardship, including the loss of close friends, throughout the time that you’ve been a band. Despite all of it, you managed to stay together and continued to show up for yourselves and your listeners — which is definitely not an easy task. What were some steps you took to mitigate such a difficult time in your lives as a band? How did your music reflect this?
THE SLAPS: Tragedy forced us to look inward. Life is short so we figured we may as well do something we really care about. We all care about writing, performing, and being in a band with our best friends. We don’t know how to live without music. It’s the byproduct of our existence as individuals and as collaborators, like CO2.
It was a series of unfortunate events that led to a whole spectrum of emotional expression. It’s easy to love your friends when everythings cool and you're partying and fooling around, experimenting, being artists. But what happens when somebody is angry or battling depressive states or feeling undervalued or is physically hurt or is just unhappy? That is when true friends shine. We really wanted this entity's relations to remain stable and were grateful to still be strong and supportive of each other. I’m like drying tears off my keyboard. I guess the first step was to just allow everyone to feel what they are feeling and allow time enough to shift uncertainty into something solid. Not only supporting each other musically but as deep deep reliable homies. Ultimately it shows up in the music as devotion. Devotion to each other, devotion to our craft, devotion to the instruments maybe most of all.
LUNA: This new album combines a myriad of influences from various genres. What were some bodies of work—including music, film, visual art, etc, that you used as points of reference while working on it?
THE SLAPS: The guitar work of Sam Prekop on his self-titled album. The landscapes of the United States of America. Listening to a lot of Shed and The Orb at the time. Made me comfortable with being unpredictable. Made me comfortable with being patient. Also listening to Old Ramon and Weird little Birthday. Our rock idols. The ever endless well that is the history of Chicago music. Thrill Jockey, Drag City, Kranky have been cited by countless folks as influences for years and will continue to inspire till the record and CD players fall apart. The late 90’s early 00 Jim O’rourke records, sea and cake, stars of the lid, Isotope 217, Pullman, Papa M.
LUNA: You recorded the album at Hummingbird Recordings in Atlanta, GA. Can you walk me through the creative process of this album? Were there any notable differences in comparison to your previous work?
THE SLAPS: This was a slow burn record. Some of these songs have been worked and reworked over as much as four years. Hummingbird was a natural and comfortable fit. After shopping around to a lot of bigger expensive studios we never felt comfortable pulling the trigger and committing to some big crazy space. Hummingbird was fresh, homey, and full of friends. After a crazy year navigating the music industry it was just what we needed. A place where we could just lay it down and get the songs done, minimal pressure, minimal distractions. I think the biggest difference in comparison to previous work is the amount of last minute changes and general first thought best thought mentality we committed to.
Sould n Settled got a slight day of tracking chordal rework, Flip was a demo idea we decided to not play or work on at all until the day we tracked it, Filthy Sex Maneuvers gained a spur of the moment improvised outro. The list could go on. After working and reworking these songs we needed a place that felt as comfortable as the living rooms they were written in, with just enough professional edge to feel like we were writing the final drafts. Ben and Evan and Hummingbird studios provided just that.
LUNA: What do you look forward to for the remainder of 2024?
THE SLAPS: Sharing the rest of the album, performing with new and old friends around the country, connecting with our loyal fans, the end of this election cycle, start getting recordings of these new demos.
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