Slowly Rolling Camera: Silver Shadow

Apparently you can roll quite a long way in a decade, slowly or not. To jump from Slowly Rolling Camera's self-titled debut (Edition, 2014) to Silver Shadow feels like hearing two different bands entirely. Granted, they switched from vocal songs to all-instrumental pieces along the way, so just about any outfit would sound completely changed. Besides that obvious shift in tone, though, this trio's electro-jazz-hop fusion has also come a long way in itself—and yet to those who might have followed them all along, the path leading from that point to this has been a series of perfectly understandable turns. You can hear a throughline of vivid and patient moods all along, while each album stakes out its own niche and their knack for soundscaping continues to evolve.

The cinematic feel is of course central to the group (the clue is in the name), and so with those distinct identities, their recordings can easily feel like chapters in one long soundtrack. However picturesque the group sounded with the quietly intense R&B of the early albums with singer Dionne Bennett, their expansive movies-for-the- mind approach has always worked best without words. Electric jazz continued swirling with vaguely trippy electronica on a couple more dynamic outings, followed by their first genuine film soundtrack with 2023's Flow (Edition) showing the trio at their most organic and, well, fluid. To mark their tenth anniversary, Silver Shadow gives us their own silver-screen score—not the glitzy kind, but more in the realm of late- night noir where everything feels like a dream.

The palette remains familiar with a thoroughly modern edge; Elliot Bennett kicking out hypnotic grooves, Dave Stapleton's electric keys floating and shimmering all around, and guitars and horns coming and going as the mood demands. The core members still feel no need to be prominent—or even mostly audible, in the case of Deri Roberts programming beats and weaving everyone all around the soundstage—and the whole ensemble is likewise balanced as if to deliberately avoid putting anyone in the spotlight. When Stuart McCallum takes a wailing guitar solo that could have torn things up, it's mixed low enough to be half in the distance instead. Saxophone lines can shake up the groove with sudden walls of echo and then wander away just as quickly, similar to the way some pieces fade out or drift off without reaching a definite conclusion. It all gives the feeling that the music carries on a life of its own when the CD/LP/stream isn't playing, in the same way that well-written film characters are easy to imagine going about their lives in between the scenes we get to see.

Silver Shadow may be SRC's shortest album at just over half an hour, but feels just as packed with pictures and feelings as any of their others. When the finale builds to a light sweeping glide, it feels less like a closing-credits reel than an opening prelude full of even more future promise. The rules of inferior sequels and diminishing returns do not apply here—each showing at this cinema keeps taking us somewhere new and surprising.

Comments