Slow Steve is the nom de rock of Berlin-based Frenchman Rémi Letournelle, and on his debut LP, Adventures, he gathers up pop from the fringes of his two homes (plus a little good-old-fashioned American truck stop music to boot).
After he left the German group Fenster, Letournelle retreated with a pile of vintage synths to Worm Studio in Rotterdam. Once there, he honed in on a hybridized sound that combines the communist-grey overtones of Bowie’s Berlin era and the motorik pulse of the autobahn with the languorous wide-open space (if not the symphonic orchestration) of Serge Gainsbourg circa Histoire de Melody Nelson. It’s a sound that turns out to be pretty versatile, too. On opener “Eaux Usées,” Letournelle (who plays nearly everything on the record) weaves through a heavily trafficked beat, his voice a calm guide at the center of a scene whose order is just barely beyond our comprehension. “Veterans,” meanwhile, could have been taken straight from Daughn Gibson’s Me Moan, with its anxious acoustic strumming and Letournelle’s soaring baritone. Elsewhere, on the three-part “Josephine,” he pilots a breezy Tropicalia guitar line through benevolent space-race synths.
We’re proud to be premiering Adventures in whole today. Take your protein pills and give it a listen below.
Adventures track list
“Eaux Usées”
“Veterans”
“Sloth”
“Bali”
“Josephine I”
“Josephine II”
“The Giant Spider Crab from Japan”
“Josephine III”
“Oscillation”
“Red Wool”
“Foam Shapes”
Adventures is out May 6 via Morr Music.
