Dave Chamberlain

It's been a very busy couple of years for John Hughes, though until recently hardly any of the activity had anything to do with actually making music.

The owner of Hefty Records and primary component of electronic-based act Slicker set music to the background when he and his wife had a baby girl, a life move which necessitated a relocation from the city to the near suburbs. And on the record label side of things, after spending the mid and late nineties bolstering Hefty's reputation for esoteric but incredibly innovative music--everything from IDM stalwarts Telefon Tel Aviv to Detroit jazzer Phil Ranelin--the intricacies of running a label began to unravel.

"Our distribution company in the States went bankrupt," he explains to me as we sit in a local Wicker Park restaurant, "and our European distributor became very disorganized." Even something as simple as the relocation of Hefty's headquarters didn't go according to plan; in the midst of moving the label's equipment and stock, a service elevator with almost all of the above crashed, and although nobody was seriously hurt, virtually every inanimate part of Hefty Records was trapped in an elevator shaft for a week.

Though Hefty only released one proper record last year, 2004 has already been good to Hughes. In addition to releasing Telefon Tel Aviv's much lauded sophomore record, he's poised to release the fourth edition of Slicker, "We All Have a Plan," and like Telefon's record, "Plan" represents a maturation of outstanding magnitude. Although the intricate beat structuring and subtle manipulation of electronic noise remains, this time around Hughes invited a healthy handful of session players and vocalists to assist, and successfully melted the organic into the electronic--an idea that arguably represents the future of both electronic and straightforward music.

"Instead of me just sitting around and going through everything with excruciating detail, I brought in a bunch of collaborators--other musicians--and really tried to implement their ideas." Among those musicians were the fabled trombonist/onetime Motown session man Ranelin, legendary Detroit jazzman Wendell Harrison on the saxophone, and vocals from local diva du jour (and former Newcity production assistant) Lindsay Anderson, among others. "To me," he explains, "it was about stripping down all my preconceptions--the way I'd approached music before--and not really worrying about what sounds went here or there. It was from the angle of letting the songs go where they might, and worrying about everything else later."

The result marks his highest achievement to date, a record that to the uninformed ear resembles a soul or R&B record, but with an ocean of lapping and subtle differences under the surface. It also might remind a more informed listener of Telefon's record, and the comparisons are just. It's not something that Hughes shies away from. "I think it was inevitable to a point," he admits. "I mean, we're all friends, and we all share ideas.

Even the label, to a point, is collaborative. But something I wanted to do, and it was really the same for Telefon, is that we both wanted to get back to just writing songs. Both of our previous records were very electronic, and less linear. This time, it was less about process, and more about thought."

Hughes has experience working in bands with others, Bill Ding and Turtletoes, for example, but Slicker traditionally revolved around Hughes and a computer. It could have been a mess--both the end result and the process of recording--but like most other things Hughes ventures into, he pulled it off. "The recording was actually pretty natural, everything really fell into place. It was sort of a mix of, `okay, here are the parts I wrote, play them,' which was really fun, but it was more fun when we would sit around and tee off on an idea."

And with the crossover into a borderline soul/R&B sound, suddenly the Hefty record label might be faced with two artists who are more than the sum of their clicks and scratches and sub-melodies--bands with selling power. Urb magazine tagging Telefon as one of its "100 to Watch" last month just drives home the increased profile for Hefty. As one might expect, the potential of mainstream success--even moderate--is something Hughes welcomes. "We all have a pretty strong indie aesthetic, that's true, but at the same time we don't want to sell ourselves short. I mean, it's fine to have a career where you sell 5,000 records, but in the same respect, if I'm going to spend all this time working on a record, I'd like people to hear it."

In spite of the similarities, Telefon and Slicker do have one glaring contrast, which mainly revolves around a little girl to whom Hughes is steadfastly dedicated, and extrapolated down that means Slicker is not headed for the touring road. "I'm not going anywhere," he explains, "at least for more than a day or two. Telefon's record shows that they can be a successful touring band, which they want to be. My record--to me--is more of a showcase of what I want to be doing: production work, developing and helping build ideas from the ground up."

"We All Have a Plan" is officially released May 11; Slicker makes a rare DJ appearance, April 25, at Sonotheque, assisted by Prefuse 73 and DJ Rik Shaw.

(2004-04-22)

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