DANIEL BAKER: Guitar/Harmonium/Ghost Guitar/E-Bows/Keys.
DARREN BANCROFT: Vocals/Acoustic Guitar.
CRAWFORD BLAIR: Bass/Baritone Guitar/Ghost Guitar/FX.
BEN JONES: Drums/Acoustic Guitar.
Influences
Bark Psychosis - Low - Sigur Ros - Swans - Talk Talk - A Silver Mt. Zion - Gillian Welch/David Rawlings - Joni Mitchell - Kate Bush - Cocteau Twins - Stars Of The Lid - Tristeza - Brian Eno - Red House Painters - Lilys
Sounds Like
- Sunday Times Magazine 5th April -
Looking for a way out of American hardcore’s cul-de-sac of volume and velocity, the slow-core bands of the 1990s — Codeine, Low and Red House Painters — just played more slowly and more quietly. London’s Slow Life assimilate such childhood influences — the somnambulant flourishes of brushed drums and cautious guitar arpeggios — into the curiously English melancholy mood that coloured Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis. Even Coldplay fans might be seduced by the modest epic Anything 1 & 2.
- UnCut Magazine Review March 2009 -
Slow riders conjure a ghostly greatness.
Well named (in that they make Low sound like The Ramones)
The Slow Life are a haunting blend of the unconventional
and the classically beautiful, perhaps a British answer to
Shearwater. While hints of Talk Talk and The Blue Nile can
be traced in the burbles and drones hovering ominously on
the periphery, the hook is Darren Bancroft's sumptuous voice,
drenched in melancholy. The quartet's control is impeccable,
and on "Outlines" or "Home" they dovetail suspense and catharsis,
equally adept with minimalism or grandiloquence.
4 Stars
- Boomkat Review -
So what do The Slow Life sound like? They're giving you hints with the
name - at first it seems that slowcore isn't an unreasonable term to bandy
about here, although you'll hear plenty more going on in the fabric of these
songs.
Talk Talk have clearly made an impact on this band, particularly when it
comes to the relationship between vocals and the instrumental tapestry
beneath. 'Outlines' is a fine and lavish thing, luxuriating at a snail's pace
of a tempo and earning each and every languid bar. In addition to the sultry,
orchestrally bolstered songs on offer here you'll also encounter some
marvellous abstract soundscapes, such as the rainy, windscreen wiper
rhythmic to and fro of 'The Hunter St. Drift'. Unrelentingly lovely, and limited
to just 600 copies...
- Subba Cultcha Magazine -
5 Stars
A year and a half may be a long time to make any album but when it sounds this good it is very much worth it. Your new favourite band will be called 'The Slow Life' and the album that will struggle to find its way out of your music player of choice is called 'Be Not Afraid.' Delightfully light in places but with an underlying melancholy that pulls at heart strings as much as it teases the grey matter with entertaining melodies it will have your ears thanking you for such a treat. Darren Bancroft's vocals are soulfully adapted to the lo-fi movements that the band seems to have their expertise within. To pick a winner from this album is done so at a push and not without real consideration but 'When You Carry A Hammer' is a real upbeat change of tact in the album and a melody that has stuck with me all day. Brilliant.
- AltSounds Magazine -
74%
What’s in a name? The cover of ‘Be Not Afraid’ shows an elegant painted landscape with wild deer roaming across sweeping hills. This and that band name suggest some rural folk idylls within. But that’s not what is on offer here. The Slow Life is four Londoners who deliver – as suggested by the name – a curious twist on slowcore. Most of the songs are played slow but not always quiet. The band have spent time to imbue and detail their songs with soft drones, subtle but eerie atmospherics and haunting silences and dramatic pauses. Singer Darren Bancroft may not be a whisperer in the slowcore style but has a plaintive yearning to his vocals. Talk Talk is the key musical reference point but over the 50-or-so minutes of this their debut recording, The Slow Life also move between the austerity of Low and Red House Painters, the post-rock of A Silver Mount Zion and even hint at the sparse indie-rock balladry of say early Coldplay (but don’t let that put you off).
‘The Hunter Street Drift’ is the closest to ambient post-rock, echoing notes that intertwine around each other and the underlying piano motifs before being engulfed by fluttering electronic effects suggesting the beating of wings and approaching footsteps. ‘Levity’, the seven minute album closer, is far from that – sparse acoustic guitar is eventually joined by cello at a funereal pace whilst Bancroft sings “be my saviour when the walls burn”. The Slow Life really don’t go for laughs.
But they do deliver an earnest, highly accomplished long (or is that slow?) player that, like Talk Talk, brings a studio-bound, almost claustrophobic, approach to the English pastoral. Whilst not wholly original, ‘Be Not Afraid’ sounds singularly fully formed and is definitely worth spending time in its rich and spacious folds. If a bit same-y over eleven tracks, there are sufficient textures and moments of sonic invention to draw you back in. For their next record, I’d like them to be even more adventurous and move away from those pedestrian moments. But given this album took 18 months to make, we might have a bit of a wait on our hands. They aren’t called The Slow Life for nothing.
- DieShellSuitDie Magazine -
8/10
The Slow Life are like Ronseal. This statement could, in theory, prove the basis for the entire review although you wouldn’t know if they were any good or not now would you. Well lets ruminate on this a little more thoroughly then. The first track on Be Not Afraid is an instrumental affair imbibing the deep humming of a cello wit ha dream stealing sleight of violin that wearily lollops straight into track 2 - I Can You Will - in which the vocals of Darren Bancroft drift in like a gentle tide rolling up and down a sonic beach. Fitting in between a dainty Explosions in the Sky, Brenda and Jesu (minus the programmed drums and with a lesser penchant for industrial mechanisms) The Slow Life come across as big admirers of Scottish mood magicians Aerogramme and on the gentle slow-motion duvet wrap around of Outlines we also get shades of Sigur Ros, Midnight the Dog and Jacob’s Stories. Inevitable comparisons with all of these aforementioned bands and many more (Godspeed and A Silver Mount Zion for two) will be made, however The Slow Life don’t shirk away from the sleeve that they hold high and still manage to create warmth and serenity track to track that most bands would bleed their rhythm sections dry for.
The soft plodding pace of this record works well; with only a few subtle changes of gear, feedback manages to manifest itself into nimble finger picking and then vice versa. As previously mentioned with a name like The Slow Life you know exactly what you are getting, anyone expecting blast beats here are going to realise soon enough that some books covers act as mighty fine judges. It does come as something of a shock, after all that, when the realisation sets in that this band hails from London, as their music has a strangely forlorn rural feel about it. The imagery that their music evokes is that of swelling hills, drifting clouds and wind dancing playfully in your hair. This seems to come across most perfectly in the almost gang like vocals of Home, obviously this is despite the lyrics referencing “Meet by the high-rise” - not exactly a common site in wooded farmland but never the less a feeling is a feeling.
The first change of pace comes in the shape of When You Carry a Hammer with its jaunty swinging beat bringing across a far more folky Bright Eyes/Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy/Dawn Chorus style hootenanny (without the knee pumping banjo). This stops almost as soon as it starts however with a plunge back into the pedestrian string vibrato of Day For Night, which results in just above stationery heart string pulling.
Be Not Afraid seems a more than apt title as although the music doesn’t reassure you that everything is going to be ok, it does provide you with a companion for the journey, with what appears to be a certain degree of experience and tenderness. A calming whisper in the ear.
Just stopping by to say hello and give you some news. The new album 'Coolgilly and the Freakshow' from Centascope is now available worldwide from CD Baby and directly from the merchandise page of the official website. You can also get the album from Apple iTunes, MSN Music, Rhapsody, Napster, Amazon and many more.
Thank you to everyone here reading this who so kindly bought Be Not Afraid. It goes on general release on April 13th, Distributed by the wonderful Forte Distribution.
Your support of the band is most gratefully appreciated.
