PREMIERE: Sleem Gleam - Totally Pitted [Made of Magma, Kajunga Records]
Made of Magma is out via Kajunga Records on May 17, 2024. We hung ten with elusive clump of stardust Sleem Gleam (aka Ryote) to get up to speed on the record.
What is sleem about the gleam?
That’s the slime, the squiggle, the off-kilter, the acid, the midwest grit, the tubular factor. Paired with a humble glimmer you get a wacky little combo. It’s serious in a silly way, or vice versa. The Sleem Gleam alias originally formed to be a member of the synthpop duo Slurpuff. The band inevitably didn’t release any of the tunes we were working on, but we had fun and created interesting lore around our characters. Sleem Gleam had to live on and evolve beyond that.
Track A2 is “Totally Pitted.” It zips, it soars, it’s totally far out. It embodies the style of DJ sets I’ve heard you play in recent years. Overall, the project and record have a different sound than Ryote releases. Did the project form instantaneously, or did it take time for it to evolve?
Totally Pitted was actually the first track I started working on within this sonic ecosystem. That was at the end of 2019. I wanted to make faster music. Banging, but not too abrasive, more like rock music or something. Most of my inspiration was coming from surf rock, new wave, and upbeat psych stuff, so I tried to combine some of those elements with a techno/electro structure I was much more used to. The bass line, zappy sounds and general structure of this track sat dormant for over a year. My friend Brandon recorded some guitar parts for it, and it had a brief phase of being a full-on surf rock track. To fit my vision a bit more accurately, I eventually reworked and paired back the guitar to let the bass line and percussion shine. The track got finalized in 2023 so I could play it at TGB, where I always aim to deejay upbeat surfy stuff.
Should we anticipate more from both Ryote and Sleem Gleam? Will the projects co-exist?
They’ll definitely co-exist. As my tastes as an artist have grown and changed, I’ve alway been fine with simply expanding what Ryote can be, whether that’s fast, slow, art, music. It all intersects for me. The concept and mythos behind Sleem manifested itself so quickly that it demanded to be its own thing, truly an alter-ego. The essence of the project needs to stay pure and concise. I have more Sleem tracks to release, and I definitely wanna ride the wave as long as I can.
