Welsh quartet Slate share news of their debut EP Deathless, out 17 May via Brace Yourself Records. Following their first singles ‘Tabernacl’ and ‘St Agatha‘, the band have also released their new single ‘Remoter Heaven’ which at over seven minutes long is a slowburning, sprawling gothic ode. Produced by long-time collaborator Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard‘s Tom Rees, it opens with a dream state of hypnotic repetition that mounts in intensity. Vocalist Jack Shephard’s protagonist is revisiting a memory of the pain inflicted by a thorn as a child; “I was awake with feeling”, he confesses, before the song takes on the momentum that feels like a triumph over the numbness attendant to adulthood. Of the track, Shephard shares:
“I liked the idea of writing a very simple narrative to a big, epic song – something as modest as the story of a child playing in some flowers and then bursting into tears when a thorn pricks their leg. The words are an ode to that sensitivity we embrace when we are young. Then, when we become adults, we insist on subjugating all of that wonderful, absurd rage.”
Emerging from the depths of Cardiff’s burgeoning music scene Slate are barely touching their twenties. Their debut EP, Deathless, promises to be their most ambitious act of storytelling to date. Recorded in one take, the narrative of its six tracks takes place within a single room – or, perhaps, one mind. It begins with what the band feel is some of the darkest material they will ever write, to reaching, in its second half, a place of transformation and epiphany. On the EP’s vinyl edition, the lyrics are written out like a diary entry, each one penned in another member’s hand.
The band was formed by vocalist Shephard and drummer Raychi Bryant, with the later addition of bassist Lauren Edwards and guitarist Elis Penri who completed the band at the end of 2021. The four bonded over the written word playing poetry games over pints, with an affinity for the surreal works of Arthur Rimbaud and the Welsh poets R. S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas, whose reverence for their country and its people bleeds into Slate’s own lyrics.
Slate have live dates leading into the summer including showcases at The Great Escape and Green Man Festival as well as EP release shows at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach on 31st May and the Brixton Windmill on 5th June.
Slate Tour Dates
March
23rd: Ritual Union, Bristol
30th: FestEVOL, Liverpool
April
3rd: Clwb Ifor Bach*, Cardiff
May
9 -11th: Focus Wales, Wrexham
16 -18th:The Great Escape, Brighton
18th: Get Together, Sheffield
31st: Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
June
5th: The Windmill, London
August
15 -18: Green Man Festival
* = w/ Big Special
