TRACKLIST

1. Man Made Heaven. . . .10:49 2. Static Soul. . . . . .12:59 3. Automatic Motion. . . .9:16 4. Slow And Low . . . . .13:16 5. Polychrome Chant. . . .7:04 6. Speculative Vision . .10:05

Being one of his solo Faxlabel effort, Tetsu here combines many of his more familiar, 'ambient' techniques with a new direction which isn't necessarily so gentle. In the past Inoue's name has almost been synonymous with radiant, blissful passages that usually incorporated thick, padded layers all intermingling with each other to create some marvelous combination of melody, texture, and rhythm. And Slow and Low does offer this flavor of audio indulgence. However, his final solo album for the label proves also to be somewhat of an expedition into noise, entering into the less understood and less tranquil regions of the Faxlabel universe. How else to describe tracks which, in the span of 30 seconds, go from soothing liquid synth textures to abrasive collages of radio static and distortion? Or that which opens with a deafening roar and promptly blasts the escapist ambient head into (or out of) headphone oblivion? Slow and Low is the perfect culmination of his Fax solo releases and ends his trilogy in a captivating way. With this release, Inoue demonstrates his willingness to delve into something fairly different from past projects. Unsatisfied with producing music that propels the listener into a pacifying euphoria, Tetsu creates an album that challenges the listener to delve into unknown territory. Acting as a crossover between his often-referenced past Fax output and his future environmental experiments, Slow and Low is an audible shrine situated at the edge of the ambient domain.