Ripe

Slug is the brand new musical venture from the mind of Ian Black, a merrily disruptive influence on the North East music for more than a decade. His debut album 'Ripe' is released on Memphis Industries. With Slug, Black wanted to get away from the tinnitus inducing noise rock of his formative bands, letting the idea dictate the song's form and sonic palette. Black says of the album "'what ifs' play a massive part in ripe. what if we use a stoner metal riff and use it like a dub bass part or what if we combined the drumming style of John Bonham with James Brown beat and the squelch bass of Claudio Simonetti and Fabio Pignatelli".

Taking inspiration from film soundtracks (Enter the Dragon, Suspiria), 20th century abstract and minimalist music but also the rock and funk chops of Led Zeppelin, Prince and Funkadelic, the resulting album is concise, unselfconscious, idiosyncratic and exquisitely executed. Animators brothers quay, Phil Mulloy and Jan Svankmajer oblique approaches to subject matter also rubbed off on black and lend the slug album an air of the hypnagogic.