Slauson Malone 1 - EXCELSIOR
by Easton Parks
Earnest and ambiguous, EXCELSIOR seeps emotion from its pores with the most abstractly delicate and harsh use of texture this year.
Fulfillment through emptiness, delicate roughness and a fragment that is complete are all ways I would describe this innovative release. All of these adjectives contrast each other, and emotionally, this album creates inner turmoil which may be the reason it’s so brilliant. Confusingly excellent, Slauson Malone 1 encapsulates feelings of chaos and beauty with the abstract sound collage ambient pop sound of EXCELSIOR. In a post Frank Ocean’s Blonde world, art pop seems to have been looking for its new savior, and one could argue Jasper Marsalis may just be that.
The son of great trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, Jasper, under the stage name Slauson Malone 1, follows the footsteps of his father as a musician but takes a much different approach to his sound. Sonically, this album touches many genres and thematic ideas in an avant-garde fashion. With 18 tracks and a 42 minute runtime, this album feels like a multi-course meal that will take weeks to digest even for the most mature of music listeners. Residing somewhere within the ever-exciting post-rap landscape, this touchingly frightening release pushes the boundaries of modern popular music with a unique take on conceptuality and structure.
EXCELSIOR fittingly starts with “The Weather” which sputters out beautiful bright and broken sounding synths that crescendo and then calmly transition into the next song “House Music” which starts with the same synth sounds before morphing into a pseudo piano ballad.
The singles “Voyager,” “New Joy” and “Half-Life” that preceded the project are easily the most accessible songs on the album. “New Joy,” being one of the more straightforward cuts, touches on an indie pop sound with some great drum breaks throughout the track.
Many songs in this project are close to or under 2 minutes, and if listened to by itself, many of these would sound like fragments or random thoughts. Instead, Marsalis fits these pieces together into one cohesive, although not seamless, format in which they all have value.
“Love Letter Zzz” is a great example of the more haunting songs on the album with a deep string sounding synth and whispered lyrics with one impactful line being “Alien or Icarus.” The lyric of “Alien or Icarus” is one way to sum up this project with the idea that to one person this could be foreign and intimidating or to another this is ingenious and a jumping off point into further experimentation.
The ending track, “Us (Tower of Love),” repeats the words “I’m you” over a beautiful swell of an acoustic guitar and orchestral strings that detune into something wicked sounding right before the end when everything concludes with the whisper, “Excelsior.”
Being one of the more challenging listens of my year so far, EXCELSIOR’s dense tones express emotion to the listener with feelings that resonate more than just physically. Everything within the project is used as a texture and those textures seep in the soul which directly puts one’s consciousness to the forefront. This album doesn’t just push boundaries, it creates a moment in time that anyone can tap into and vanish into themselves for 42 minutes. EXCELSIOR may be abstract in sound but it is simple in this principle; you just have to feel it.