Artists / Slim Twig

Slim Twig is a shape-shifting performer and song-sculptor based in Toronto. His artistic vision is born from a twisted landscape of pop and experimental music and avant-garde film. Besides his great hair, this vision has given many critics a lot to write about since being introduced last year with his two-part EP series, Derelict Dialect and Vernacular Violence. Each EP presented a different side of Slim. Derelict Dialect represented the artist’s first experiments with a distinctive, ‘dissonant folk’ sound that eventually led him to the grittier, ‘concrete rockabilly’ sessions that appear on Vernacular Violence. Both EPs inspired acclaim, with critics remarking on Slim’s “soliloquist’s flair” (Globe and Mail) and the “mesmerizing” quality and “enduring mythology” of songs like “Whiite Fantaseee” (Pitchfork). The acclaim also included Toronto’s NOW Magazine picking Slim Twig as 2008’s Best Rock/Pop Artist of the Year.

Contempt! is the debut, full-length album from Slim Twig, a self-made exercise in resourcefulness where Slim experimented with whatever he could get his hands on. It leans decidedly towards an innovative pop sound that places sampling and found sound firmly at its core. The result, pairing the artist’s “switchblade-sharp lyrics” (NOW Magazine) with a rawer, sample-based aesthetic, is unpredictable and highly original. Beyond the attempt to move away from a conventional guitar and drum-based set up, the project is Slim’s reconciliation of his obsession with early 90s New York hip hop and the rockabilly-inflected persona that he has already cultivated. Think of it as ‘Elvis lost in the 36 Chambers’, fighting through lyrics that evoke dark, fragmented images and depraved characters.

Slim Twig got his feet wet on the road as the headliner for last year’s Pop Montreal Spring/Summer Tour before taking his first trip across the border for after-party performance duties at last summer’s Pitchfork Festival in Chicago. Slim completed his first cross-country Canadian tour with Plants and Animals and Born Ruffians in the Fall and will continue to pop up at gallery shows and late-night happenings before hitting the road again in Canada and the US later this Spring. Offstage, Slim has composed music for the award-winning short film, Letters From R, and can also be seen on screen as Billy Zero opposite Ellen Page in Bruce McDonald’s The Tracey Fragments. Slim recently wrapped filming on his latest acting gig in French director, Kim Chapiron’s film, Dog Pound.

“Slim’s growing confidence as a performer dovetails with his early interests in exploratory composition, producing a future-shocked junkie-punk epic that plays out like Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” re-cut with Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle” string section… Like all fine actors, Slim Twig’s real talent is making his fantaseee feel so real.” —Stuart Berman, Pitchfork Media

“Slim Twig exudes the kind of cool we worshipped in Extra Width-era Jon Spencer’s rockabilly punk chic and Genesis P. Orridge’s extreme mixed-media weirdness, and that’s hard to come by.” — Cam Lindsay, Exclaim!

“A Toronto icon-in-the-making, Slim Twig is already well known in indie circles for his clutch of avant-rockabilly EPs. The ever-mysterious pompadoured troubadour couples his stylishly crafted persona with his Suicide-drenched, art-damaged country tunes.” —NOW Toronto, Best Pop/Rock Artist 2008

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