Shlohmo - The End

Friends of Friends

£25.90

Format: 2 x LP
Catalogue No.: FOF175LPC
Barcode: 04062548031225
Release Date: 04 Mar 2022
Genre: Experimental/Electronic

Album opener and first single ‘Rock Music’ acted as a palette of discovery for where Laufer wanted the album to exist in. The drums were done with toy drum machines and a Mini-Korg Monotron delay, which he ended up using throughout album as well as the synth sounds from Teenage Engineering's Pocket Operators. “Like a beautiful anxious wreck, it’s a huge fucking mess and one of my favourite messes I’ve made,” he muses. Utilising a lot of the same instruments and process as ‘Rock Music,’ the title track is from the same world of “crumbling, warping shit,” as he calls it, and ‘Hopeless’ is an ode to goth and new wave. ‘Headache of the Year’ and ‘Ungrateful’ are a tale of two halves, the former a nod to the doom metal and hardcore he grew up on, and the latter a continuation made within the same session. All the vocals on ‘Best of Me’ are sample of himself. “This one feels like visiting my old brain form 2012 and reminiscent of my music form that time with new sensibilities,” he says. Recorded on cassette, played on his Dad’s upright piano and then chopped up the chords on his computer, he describes ‘We Sat in The Car’ as his secret favourite. “The very end of the song I think are my favourite 30 seconds on the whole record.” ‘Watching A Video’ feels like scrolling through a Youtube blackhole with your significant other under a warm blanket, while missiles pass overhead and ‘Be Myself’ is doing ecstasy alone in the dark. The sister song to an old one called ‘Empty Pools,’ ethereal closing track ‘Still Life’ was recorded in one take through a delay/loop pedal was written at a time when Laufer was recording a lot of guitar for the film score he was working on. It’s a lush and fitting end to a mammoth return from Laufer, who throughout ‘The End’ manages to conjure a sense of hope amidst impending fatalness.
Shlohmo's seminal third studio album

available on pink vinyl for the first time

limited to 500 copies

TRACKLISTING
A1 Rock Music
A2 The End
A3 Hopeless
B1 Eating Away
B2 Headache of the Year
B3 Ungrateful
B4 Staring at the Wall
C1 We Sat in the Car
C2 Panick Attack
C3 Watching a Video
D1 The Best of Me
D2 By Myself
D3 Still Life