Slumpy Monk - S/T
A belated psych-rock release from a self-described lazy band
There’s something strange going on with Slumpy Monk.
For starters, that creature on the album cover looks like a frog who’s taken a vow of silence and wandered off to practice meditation. I’m not sure if it’s about to croak, chant, or hand me a mushroom.
Reed Wilson from the band tells me they recorded this self-titled record five years ago and only just decided to release it. His explanation is they’re lazy, so lazy that they forgot the album existed. The tracks sat untouched on a hard drive for half a decade, which somehow makes it even more impressive that they were beautifully mixed and mastered the whole time.
Even funnier, Cory Hanson of Wand did those mixes and masters. Not exactly a household name, but a seriously gifted musician and producer. Did he forget about it, too? Or did he just shrug and move on? No one seems entirely sure.
At some point, Slumpy Monk decided it was time to let the outside world hear the music they used to love making. Emphasis on “used to,” since they don’t even sound convinced they’re still a band.
Man, I have so many questions.
It helps that Slumpy Monk is actually a very good little record. “Wake Up Your Mind” opens with a distinctly ’80s sound: light, airy space-rock tones and soft-focus synths. It’s catchy without trying too hard.
“Quarantinia” earns its title. Recorded during the COVID days, it’s a harder-driving affair, built on a steady krautrock beat. It sounds like motion for motion’s sake, something to lock into when days all start feeling the same.
Then there’s “Om Mani Padme Hum,” which is stupendously strange. It’s meditation music that forgot what it was supposed to do. Hypnotic but restless, dreamlike yet off-kilter, it drifts through surreal territory with distorted mantras. It’s peaceful in theory, unsettling in practice.
“Japa Rock” storms in, kicks you in the balls, and steals your wallet. It’s abrupt, aggressive, and rude. The band suddenly leans into punk energy and tears up whatever loose script they’d been following. It’s the album’s most confrontational moment, and it works precisely because it feels so impulsive.
The record closes with “Ignorance,” a more traditional psych-rock drift. There’s plenty of chewy guitar tone and distortion, the kind you can sink into.
As I listened, I kept wondering, Why wait five years to release this? I guess it doesn’t matter. Slumpy Monk doesn’t feel like an album burdened by timing. It’s simply a good record that deserves to be heard, even if the band makes little effort to push it into the world. If anything, their apparent disinterest in marketing feels consistent with the music itself. And, hey, I wrote about it, right?
A few additional notes …
I have no idea where this band is from. There’s no city, country, or even vague regional hint on Bandcamp, and Reed didn’t mention it in his email either. It doesn’t matter, of course, but I found it amusing that Slumpy Monk could just as easily be an American project as a group operating out of some remote corner of the world.
Also: One of the Bandcamp tags is “hypnagogic,” a term that’s fallen out of fashion but still lingers on the edges of psych discourse. It refers to the mental state between wakefulness and sleep and is a slippery micro-genre critics latched onto in the late 2000s. Ariel Pink was its most visible ambassador. It was a simpler time back then.
So, check out the almost-forgotten work of Slumpy Monk, a mysterious, lazy group making hypnagogic-leaning rock. Reed tells me maybe some people will enjoy the record, and if you don’t, that’s okay too. Knowing the band, they might soon forget that they even released it.