Review & Full Album Premiere: Slow Draw, The People’s Department of Governmental Checks and Balances
Drone soloist Mark Kitchens, who operates under the moniker of Slow Draw with the experimentalist project, is on cusp of an April 29 release for his new five-song LP, The People’s Department of Governmental Checks and Balances. From the tense dub of its opening chapter “A Misleading Sense of Direction,” which sets its low-key beat and weaving line of synthesizer drone as a backdrop for a sample from air traffic control that I’m pretty sure returns backward on closer “Trying to Land,” the 35-minute work sets itself forth as a kind of resonant, individualized psychedelia distinct from what Kitchens has done with Slow Draw up to this point, but very much born out of those root creative impulses.
Consider that most drone you hear is made by guitarists. Kitchens handles a range of instruments in Slow Draw, but is also the drummer in Stone Machine Electric, and so that organic and electric beatmaking would be a part of his approach makes sense, even as the 12-plus-minute “Paradise of Fools” seems to be so much about the SunnO)))-style tonal overwhelm of its guitar. And fair enough, but while Kitchens spends a decent amount of the total runtime in that space, it’s still only part of the overarching impression, and Kitchens is no less purposeful in leaving the reaches open for most of “Inventing Scapegoats,” taking the placed-far-back vocals buried in the mix of the song prior and putting them as the swirling monasterial fog of the ongoing ritual exploration. Where “Paradise of Fools” was only missing drums to give a full-band feel — accomplishing a Megaton Leviathan-style avant drone-gaze in the 
meantime — “Inventing Scapegoats” is much quieter, to a point of minimalism early on, but does tip over to manifesting that full-band feel.
That in itself isn’t necessarily new. Kitchens had guitar/bass/drum solo arrangements on 2023’s The Mystic Crib (review here), and that rhythm would be part of the ideology even in a drone project for a drummer should be taken as no surprise. It’s the way Kitchens brings drone, psych and a kind of meditative feel together. “A Misleading Sense of Direction” is part of it in terms of setting the atmosphere, and “Paradise of Fools” reminds of Author & Punisher at its noisiest, so I’m not complaining about that either, but in “Inventing Scapegoats” and “Data Corrupter,” the latter of which sounds like it was recorded on a room mic filtered through a ColecoVision, Kitchens realizes something different in heavy psych and drone. It’s not quite drone-gaze, or heavy-gaze or whatever the difference might be between the two, but it draws from that as well as from the likes of Om and, in the case of the latter, its rough sound and samples make it sound all the more like a garage-psych dispatch from the apocalyptic now.
Each piece on The People’s Department of Governmental Checks and Balances — and if you find the implications of the cover art shocking, grow up; even David Brooks is calling for a popular uprising — adds something to the procession of the whole, and the kind of drummer’s-drone point of view can be heard in the jazzy motion of “Trying to Land,” which would seem to bookend with the leadoff, but in terms of Slow Draw making ‘songs,’ with vocals and changes and arrangements and so on, the album is an immediate standout in Kitchens‘ growing catalog. His journey to this point has brought him to a place of what feels like genuine stylistic discovery and a nascent process emerging in a project that has made experimentation a founding principle. I’m curious as hell to know where Kitchens might take Slow Draw from here, and his move toward songwriting is a big part of why.
The album streams in full below. Please enjoy:
The next Slow Draw work arrives April 29th with the new album “The People’s Department of Governmental Checks & Balances”.
IN THE BAND’S OWN WORDS:
“This album is a continuation of the frustration with current times and events as expressed in the recent release ‘Living in a Land of Scarecrows’. Things seem to be going in reverse, and nothing is logical, so, this mess of songs reflects that kind of chaos and frustration.
Since 2017, Mark Kitchens (one third of Stone Machine Electric) has been steadily releasing a series of singles and albums through his solo project Slow Draw. Informed by drone, ambient, psychedelia, and more, Slow Draw creates patient, exploratory soundscapes. At times unsettling, at others peaceful, Kitchens navigates his way through space and noise with unwavering intent.
Slow Draw is:
Mark Kitchens
