18 Slashes - Jawnnobyl

Who is 18 Slashes?

18 Slashes is the current unsigned project from Australian-Venezuelan producer and musician Stefan Schneider (Henges, A Death By The Seaside) focusing on fictional game soundtracks for games that don’t exist and genre clashing industrial, drum and bass, synthwave and anything in between. They released their first EP in 2019, titled NOTFROMAROUNDTHESEPARTS and have since released a steady onslaught of singles and a second EP, 2022's LFT//OVR.

What is Jawnnobyl?

Jawnnobyl is the first full-length album from 18 Slashes. Jawnnobyl is also a soundtrack to a Playstation game that doesn't exist, inspired by the Philadelphia refinery explosion of 2019 and imagining a game world where Aliens disguised as realtors from NYC are gentrifying the area to build a base and are being fought by the main character.



Once you've got that mindset ready, it's really easy to just slide in and feel everything this album has to offer.  Crisp production, with lots of quality breaks that you'd expect in drum and bass, accompanied by EBM-friendly basslines and wonderfully textured synthscapes that let you just vibe completely into what's on offer. 

As someone who grew up in the PS1 era and is an active collector of PS1 games, this album hits. And it hits hard. There are some things that stand out as "not era-appropriate" - some Dubsteppy bass-wobbles that didn't exist at the time, for instance - but they don't feel inauthentic. If Tim Wright had access to those synths when he was making the soundtrack to Wipeout, he damn sure would have slapped them in. Some tracks (The Gospel According To Jawn) would have been right at home in Gran Turismo, while others (Jabronis From Mars) would have easily slotted into something like Ghost In The Shell or Future Cop: LAPD. Just with a much better bitrate.

Of course, that does mean that this album is an instrumental one, which some people might not gel with. But that isn't me in the slightest. This album met and exceeded every expectation I had for it. Highly recommended.

As of press-time, this album isn't actually released yet. I was kindly given a review copy by 18 Slashes. Currently on bandcamp, you can hear two of the album's ten tracks to get a nice taste of what's to come. The official release date is January 13th, 2023.
Jan 08 2023