Needle Time

  Slab! - Sanity Allergy [INK 037 UK 1988 24-Bit 176.4kHz FLAC] I last ripped this album around 2014 as the final part of a run of Slab! posts on my old ESWA blog, two members of the band joined in the comments discussion to add to Steven Wilson's 2011 blog comment that Slab! were his favourite alternative eighties band, suggesting they were like Michael Gira's Swans had found funk. Here is a brand new full resolution rip of their second & final album Sanity Allergy . Slab! front man Stephen Dray described Sanity Allergy as a series of bad demos - I suggest he was being a tad over critical of this record. Whilst Station KY and Land Of The Midnight Sun sound unfinished and misplaced, Son Of Sloth seguing into the magnificent Born In A Wreck are among Slab!'s best work. Cancer Beach is confusing as it twists between gospel-funk and Sabbath metal riffs. Switchback Ride is loud, powerful and driven by distortion - it was a fine antidote to the poor Deaths Head Soup ...

  Slab! - Descension [INK 32 UK 1987 24-Bit 176.4kHz FLAC] I suggested I could squeeze one more in .....so here you go! If you don't know this album (this is the third time I have ripped it over the years), you are in for a treat!! Best described as the best fusion of brutal funk, industrial and noise aesthetics you have ever come across, like early Swans if they had got the funk. The Slab! sound is immense, noisy, funky and dirty. The band had moved their sound on from the original singles and sessions, now experimenting with multiple layers of noise & distortion carefully constructed to form the basis of what we would recognise as a song, but with twists & meanderings with shock tactics to keep the listener enthralled. Opener, Tunnel of Love is not a warm and comfortable place, it is frightening, painful and grinding. It builds to a crescendo of noise, you don't know or care what vocalist Stephen Dray is saying, you just know that you have to prepare for the r...

Slab! ‎- Music From The Iron Lung [MINK 25 UK 1987 24-Bit FLAC] Music From The Iron Lung is a mini-LP compiling the might Slab!'s first two 12" singles ...a compilation of hard, dirty, noisy and very funky indie-rock.  The mix of electronics, distortion and horns on Mars On Ice sucks you in to the powerful Slab! sound and is a great opener. Oedipus T. Rex is a little more conventional however the consistent layer of feedback and Steven Dray's throaty vocals take Slab! beyond the basic constraints of funk. Stand out is the immense 7 minute, flanged bass, workout Parallax Avenue , which was also their second single. This is a monster of a track and is light years ahead of anything the second wave of industrial bands on the other side of the Atlantic could muster. The closing Yukon fuses industrial noise and brutal funk into a wall of pain, as if early Swans had found the funk. Play loud! A1 Mars On Ice A2 Painting The Forth Bridge A3 Oedipus T. Rex A4...