SLOW CRUSH
Rooted in Leuven, Belgium, Slow Crush move in the space between haze and weight, a dream-tilted sound built on blurred guitars, warm low-end currents, and Isa Holliday’s featherlight vocal presence. Their new album Thirst (2025, Pure Noise Records) deepens this identity, pulling their shimmering ambience into darker, denser shapes. Glitch textures, rough percussive details, and an unexpected rise of saxophone ripple through the record, widening the world the band have been shaping since Aurora and Hush without disturbing its fragile centre.
Beneath the haze, Slow Crush work with a kind of playful precision. Isa’s vocals cut small, clear lines through the saturated guitars, giving the music a quiet anchor even in its heaviest moments. The band lean into unexpected details, a kitchen-recorded snare, a stray glitch, a saxophone line that should not work but somehow does, small imperfections that keep the sound human and close. Isa’s lyrics touch on burnout, reconnection, and the strange rhythm of touring life, approached with a softness that never turns sentimental. The result is music that feels warm, weighty, and slightly unruly at the edges, always shifting but never losing its pulse.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Slow Crush draw the room inward with a soft gravitational pull. Songs open in a diffuse glow before guitars gather into thick, cascading layers, Isa’s voice threading through the haze with quiet intensity. Subtle sonic details, a brittle snare, a flicker of glitch, the sudden swell of brass, flare briefly before dissolving into the wash. The dynamics arc slowly, building pressure without breaking the atmosphere’s delicate tension. The effect is enveloping rather than overpowering, a suspended, luminous space where sound settles around you like a shifting veil.
