Slope (Remastered)

Steve Jansen, the co-founder of new wave legends Japan and bona fide collaboration multi-hyphenate, is reissuing his first two solo studio albums: Slope and Tender Extinction. But how to accurately parse Steve Jansen’s path through music? It’s a journey that’s taken him from 80s royalty as what The Guardian calls “a key component” of one of the UK’s premier new wave acts, releasing classic records like Tin Drum and Quiet Life, to a renowned collaborator, working with artists as diverse as Ryuchi Sakamoto, Anja Garbarek, Annie Lennox, and, most recently, Maiya Hershey. His is a career of ever-changing styles and genres, from blissed-out electronica made with YMO’s Yukihiro Takahashi, to his work with jazz-rock group Nine Horses, to the heavy atmospheres of his transcendent Exit North project, and far, far, beyond.
Based on his consistently excellent creative output, it’s not surprising that he’s also had time to fit in a clutch of excellent solo albums. Although on first listens the music on Slope and Tender Extinction can seem austere and chilly, it certainly bears further listening. Songs that might seem impenetrable can shyly give up their secrets – a moment of tenderness, say, or soaring strings, or a wistful chord change. Slope, his debut, was described by The Observer upon its release in 2007 as “unclassifiable”, a description that goes some way to detailing the album’s crystalline synthetic peaks, dusty analogue depths, and wide experimental sweep. To hear the icy IDM of ‘Grip’ rubbing up against the drone-led modern classical in ‘Sow The Salt’, and the strange sound experiments in ‘Gap of Cloud’ juxtaposed with the fractured emotion of ‘Playground Martyrs’ is to hear an artist capable of ploughing his own unique furrow through music.
Although nine years and another glut of projects (an ambient album called A Secret Life made with John Foxx and Steve D’Agostino, an array of instrumental pieces, Jansen and Japan bandmate Richard Barbieri’s fifth album, Lumen, and the list really does go on and on) came between Slope and second album. But why this album and why now? It’s a special piece of work, and place the talents of an artist that often stays in the shadows front and centre. Jansen is someone whose every action is in service of The Project, shapeshifting and adapting in relation to how he can improve the music. He’s said in that past that “I remove myself from any references to other people or popular culture. I explore sound and composition without any preconceptions about the finished piece or its place in the world.” Though this is a humble approach that clearly pays dividends Slope allows for the full range of his influences, experimentation, and ideas to come to the fore.