To someone who hasn’t heard anything since God Loves Ugly, this album may seem impossibly alien, even inter-dimensional, created in an alternate universe where Ant is a band, Slug is a shape-shifting manifestation of the everyman, and the dreary, almost Cure-like simplicity of Overcast! was only a dream.
But by connecting the dots drawn by Seven’s Travels and You Have No Idea How Much Fun We’re Having, it’s easier to construct a mental timeline of a rapidly evolving organism which has yet to see its final culmination.
Sonically, the early recordings (e.g. the Headshots and Sad Clown tapes) were like a sandbox for iconic Rhymesayers producer Ant, in which theories were applied, experiments were tested, and the bounds and constraints of recording on four-track tapes were thoroughly explored and exploited. Atmosphere's first official album scrapped a lot of these trial designs, instead building a solid foundation with what he knew worked: minimal instrumentation and melodies over chiseled, sample-driven beats with notoriously abrasive snares. Murky and simple, yet profoundly real, this album helped define what could be considered a prototype for much of the Rhymesayers sound. Likewise, the productions on the Dynospectrum album are like a Bizarro-world mirror of the Overcast! beats—similar in their structure and style, but unique to the album just the same.
The sophomore album Lucy Ford built a framework over the bricks and mortar laid by the first, and God Loves Ugly packed in the insulation and put up the drywall. But it wasn’t until Seven’s Travels that Ant’s evolution as a composer/producer became glaringly evident, taking one giant leap off the shoulders of the last album, over the rainbow, and into the full-color realm of the recording studio. Sampled beats began to give way to more complex and original rhythms, bass took on a dirtier complexity, and real-audio recordings of instruments added depth and character to a once-flattened entity.
Does this look like the Kowalski's in Uptown to anyone else?
Since then the sound has been cruising on a momentous trajectory out of the familiar atmosphere, out of the solar system, into a whole new galaxy where relativity is king and gravity holds nothing down. When Life Gives You Lemons is Atmosphere’s crash entry into the fourth dimension. Space once occupied by MIDI and chopped samples has been given to real guitars and rich, full basses. Wide choruses of layered vocals give shape to unusually catchy refrains (“You,” “The Skinny”). Laid-back, Tom-Waitsian lounge pianos lay a soundtrack for storytelling (“Like the Rest of Us,” “The Waitress”), and the idea that a rap song has to have a beat is thrown out (“Guarantees”). It seems even Ant’s trademark snare has been chained up and tamed, at least to where it can be safely observed by the multitude, a ferocious beast made humble by the certainty of its own cage.
Like Ant’s work on Felt 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet, there is definitely homage paid to the progressive-urban sound of the 1980s. He utilizes retro-sounding synthesizers, smoothly layered guitar accompaniment and reverberating drums, seen best on tracks like “Can’t Break” and “Dreamer.” Some even take a Moog-influenced, Depeche-Mode approach, as in “The Skinny” and, more so, “Your Glass House,” which sounds so simple it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what about it is cool. But it works.
Slug at the 2004 Van's Warped Tour
Slug’s spectrum of observation has also widened, though after getting used to the puffed-up introspection he provides so readily in the first few records, it can be hard to tell when his narratives are actually about other people and when he’s juxtaposing himself into someone else’s shoes. Many songs give obscured and fractured views of characters who may be real people, may be rhetorical examples, or may be distorted, metaphoric reflections of his own persona (“You”). These unite to create a teasingly incomplete sociological study, a flavor which Atmosphere has not fully revisited since Lucy Ford’s “The Woman with the Tattooed Hands.”
Over the years, we’ve seen a steady maturation of the Slug persona, from the self-loathing ladies’ man and sad class clown into a more sympathetic, omniscient third-party reviewer. This evolution has probably been propelled by Sean Daly’s real-life trials and growing pains: balancing his business with his artistry, balancing fatherhood with the demands of his profession, and balancing his own inner child with the shaping and hardening of his grownup shell. His careless and Zen-like worldview, once so refreshing, has clearly morphed under the pressures and demands of adult life. In many ways it seems old "Sept Sev Sev Two" is gently preparing Atmosphere’s mostly youthful fan base for the day when their own carefree perspectives are raped by life’s realities, and the responsibilities of adulthood present themselves with painful clarity. Not to say he’s a pessimist; there’s a certain eagerness about his attitude that almost makes getting old seem like another childish adventure. After all, there’s no escaping the truth that all things change, and you either adapt with them or go extinct.
It’s clear Slug and Ant have no plan of rolling over, curling up, and drying out any time soon. But sonically, they may have reached the pinnacle. Once you’ve gone from sample-based beats and DJs to elaborate production and a full band, only to combine the best of both worlds and still sound good doing it, it’s hard to imagine breaking new ground in the sound spectrum. Then again, I never imagined I’d hear a hardcore version of “Shrapnel” until they formed the Atmosphere band, so I’m not giving up on the possibility of surprises lurking around the next corner.
# # #
Roe Pressley
