Marcel Sletten - Heather and Birch (2024)

Athens, Georgia producer Marcel Sletten’s fourth album is his most intense work to date. Fusing cavernous dub techno percussion with brutal passages of harsh noise wall, Heather and Birch is a far cry from the shimmering ‘80s synths of Vicious Kisses or the melancholic folktronica of Mammatus Clouds.

The layers of screeching feedback on Heather and Birch’s nine-minute opener, “Revenant,” are at times so distorted it sounds like Sletten is attempting to break the sound barrier. While cuts such as this one, “The Long Suicide,” and “Match” are clearly inspired by certain elements of dub and industrial techno, Heather and Birch’s unique blend of dance and noise sounds closer to Pan Sonic or Ben Frost than Basic Channel or Surgeon.

“Waterfront,” the album’s Actress-esque lead single, is easily one of Sletten’s most dancefloor-ready tracks, riding a blown-out dub groove until the track climaxes with a powerful wave of distorted ambient synths, sounding a bit like MBV jamming with Huerco S.

Side B’s opener “Elizabeth St, Red Hook, NY,” inspired by a weekend trip Sletten took to the Hudson Valley village last year, recalls some of the dark ambient compositions of California Delta Blues and Irish Words, fusing new age drones with amplifier feedback. It’s the only track on Heather and Birch that you could really call “ambient”; the rest of these tunes are straight-up dark and violent takes on club music, which Sletten seems to be fully immersed in at this stage of his career.