Slomo Sapiens Explore Their Ultra-Fuzzy Alter Egos With "Slömos: Volume 1"
Slomo Sapiens, photo by Britt Boyce
By Emily Herbein
Slomo Sapiens, the psychedelic “sludge rock” trio, released what was arguably the most predictable and topical album of 2020 with Cabin Fever Dreams, just as quarantine hit last year. After a year of experimenting with their time, creativity, and output, they’ve been lucky enough to play a handful of outside-the-box gigs, which is more than most artists could say. They released their own guitar pedal, the Slomo Fuzz, and they recorded an experimental EP with it, Slömos: Volume 1, as a way to explore their own sound and peripheral genres. This is a band that has found so much meaning in connecting with Philly’s music community, so of course, the songs feature lots of other local musicians, and the promotion and production surrounding the EP saw lots of help from other like-minded creatives. With songs rooted in a heavier sound than they’re used to, this project started out as a self-described mess and turned into a collection of songs that feels the most exploratively authentic to another side of their sound. I talked with Ceallaigh, Jon, and Greg about what this year has looked like since we talked about Cabin Fever Dreams last February and how these DIY songs are still reflective of their sound.
Take me through the process of putting together these songs. You’ve emphasized the “alter ego” aspect of this EP quite a bit. Why is that important to you this time around?
Ceallaigh: “Sandpounder,” the single that came out first, is a song that we’ve had for quite a while, even before Cabin Fever Dreams. It just didn’t vibe with the album’s concept. We knew we wanted to release it at some point when it made sense to, but that wasn’t it. One time, a buddy of mine was visiting from New Zealand and we were jamming, and the result was this really heavy song that we felt would work on an EP with “Sandpounder,” and that became “Salem.” So we formed this idea that we’d explore that genre for an EP. We made Slömos with an umlaut over the first “o” as sort of our evil twin that we could use as an avenue to explore different genres.
Jon: There are a bunch of features on this EP, too. Every song features a Philly artist. “Sandpounder” has James Everhart of Scantron and Cosmic Guilt.
Ceallaigh: He rips a guitar solo on that and plays some slide.
Jon: “There’s Nothing More Evil in this World than Time” has Jaret Salvat-Rivera from Heavy Temple on the guitar solo.
Ceallaigh: Jeff Lucci from Mo Lowda & the Humble plays bass on that track, and Mike Kiker from St. James & the Apostles plays flute and keys. “Salem” is with my buddy Nick, and “Spook the Prince” has Dan Rice from The Dawn Drapes on vocals.
Greg: Basically everyone that lives in Fishtown is on this album.
Ceallaigh: “Chi” is sort of a run-off thing that came about when Jeff Lucci was playing around with recording with us, and it became its own instrumental track.
Jon: He was just working on a loop pedal and it sounded really cool, so that became its own song. And honestly, a lot of these songs are just hodgepodged and recorded all over the place. Some of the drums were recorded in my basement. Some parts are recorded at a studio on Delaware Ave that doesn’t exist anymore. So those are the two drum tracks on “Salem.” I gave Jeff all my Logic sessions because he’s a fantastic producer and he was amazingly helpful.
Ceallaigh: We ran all of the mixes through tape when they were ready and it gave the songs this warmth that we wanted. We always had the vision that this would be a lo-fi sort of thing that we could detail and color. Jeff is so good at what he does that he made it sound really good. Another motivator to get this EP done was when we got the Slomo Fuzz pedal. We re-recorded all the guitar parts with that. That kind of gave us a new excitement about the whole time. Jon also sings a majority of the vocals on this EP, so it’s sort of like his vocal debut. Hopefully, we hear more of Jon’s sweet voice in the future.
Jon: And Greg played on it too. We just totally took over that question.
Greg: Jeff was really the MVP, yeah. We had all of these different ideas and just a mess of files that Jon had on his computer and it almost looked like this project would never be a thing until we took it to Jeff. Given what we gave him, it’s incredible that he pulled it all together.
Ceallaigh: It almost didn’t get released because of COVID and this messy last year and recording at too many different places. It was a bit insane but we got it done.
Jon: I don’t know what the catalyst was to release this right now — probably Ciaran Wall of Lady HD telling us to do it. And having someone else that isn’t us looking at this was so helpful, so Jeff mixing it was great.
Ceallaigh: You can ruin a project if you look at it for too long. Analyzing every single moving part of it until it sounds like work isn’t fun anymore. But there still will be a Slömos: Volume 2 at some point. It won’t be our next release because I want to emphasize that this is like an experimental release, but we’ll do another.
Why did you decide to release your own guitar pedal? A genius move, btw. I saw that online pretty much everywhere for a whole week.
Ceallaigh: The pedal wouldn’t have happened without COVID. I wanted a custom-made pedal just for myself. We made a promo video for it with Kirby, and of course we had to make it funny since we were working with him, and the consequence of that was that people weren’t sure if we actually had made a real pedal or not. Like “Oh, you guys were just being funny?” But I just wanted a pedal for myself. I was unemployed for a few weeks during COVID so I researched a bunch of fuzz pedals because I wanted to replicate or do something similar to a ‘70s British fuzz sound. I got my hands on one and took it apart and looked inside. My friend owns a pedal company and he helped me customize it. We’d go back and forth with these sound clips and he’d send me “A, B, or C?” options until we got it right. He ended up liking it so much that he actually wanted to sell it with his company. We called it Slomo Fuzz, and Brian Langan made the artwork for it. We only made 13 of them and they all sold. It’ll be a few months until we have more because it was handmade, but it’s all over the Slömos: Volume 1 EP.
Jon: We’ll just be a pedal company now. We’ll make an album based off of each pedal and just sell those. We have to make money somehow.
Ceallaigh: That’s the natural progression of every band, I think. Start making music and then you make a pedal. We’re gonna have to open a whole merch store. We’re a brand now. It’s like Kiss who merchandised everything from wine to coffins.
Since we’ve last spoken about Cabin Fever Dreams, what has this year in quarantine looked like for you? What do you owe to this weird break from normalcy?
Greg: Quarantine sucked, but a positive that came out of it was all the free time to make this EP, and Ceallaigh making a pedal. Britt Boyce really championed us for staying busy through the year. We DJ’d at International Bar, we played on the roof at The Pharmacy. Things we didn’t think would ever happen still happened.
Ceallaigh: Jon did the Philly Holiday Album and I got a new studio down the road to record an album’s worth of songs. On the other side of this, we have a lot of unreleased material. Had it not been for COVID, Jon probably wouldn’t have thought of the Holiday Album, I wouldn’t have thought to make a pedal. Greg wouldn’t have found a quicker way to get here from Manayunk.
Greg: I found a new bike route and I’m really happy about it. Only 30 minutes this time.
Ceallaigh: The timing and the name of Cabin Fever Dreams — coming out right at quarantine was so topical. But hopefully, we can still do that tour we had planned for last spring.
Greg: Thanks for really mentioning the isolations aspect of the album in the article you wrote last year. It was just such weird timing and everyone was like “they predicted this.” All the press we got for that album was so focused on that specific part of the album because it was so fitting.
Jon: I remember the title was “Era of Isolation,” and that’s when everyone thought the quarantine would only be two weeks. I was like, “it’s not an era,” and now here we are a year later and we’re talking to you about this again.
Greg: My favorite thing about this year, just to make it light, was when Jon dropped the Parody for Charity album, and I was driving around and I heard the Party Muscles song, “Fernin’ For You” on WXPN. I texted Colin and was just like, “Dude, what a weird year.” That just hits the nail on the head. Everyone’s fernin’ for each other.