Album Review: Slime – Company
2 min read
Under the name Slime, Will Archer records the kind of subtle tracks that a casual listener might dismiss entirely. But, if one is willing to give the young producer the requisite attention and time, they will find a musician who has an uncanny knack when it comes to exploring the languid territory of dreams. Though Company, his debut album, is perhaps not a perfect work, it has a great deal going for it, and immediately and memorably marks Archer as one to watch.
Company is dominated by a laidback, inoffensive tone, though to brand the work as one-note would be incorrect and unfair. Archer covers a lot of ground, swinging back and forth between the gentle beauty of a track like Striding Edge and Down And Tell’s ever so slightly insidious suggestion. He can turn an emotion on a dime, carefully walking the boundary between surreal beauty and something with a little bit more bite.
That said, at times Archer seems afraid of repeating himself, and drops curve balls so dramatic they slow proceedings down to a near halt. Patricia’s Stories, a slice of laid back hip hop, seems to emerge from nowhere, and Jeremiah Jae’s guest spot is horrendously out of place. Similarly, the funky strains of The Way of Asprilla seem grafted on from another record entirely, and the myriad of styles ultimately comes to feel like hollow risk rather than a carefully constructed experimentation.
Nonetheless, Company deserves a listen, and a proper one at that. It is, on the whole, the kind of debut album that we see only rarely these days; a work that bursts with creativity, but more than that, with a genuine sense of authorship. Though he may stumble at times, Will Archer is a man with his own very distinct sound.
