Releases

Plastic Jazz Album

Release Date July 3, 2026
Label Primordial Void
Format DL

Marcel Sletten's eighth album is his most straightforward, stylistically cohesive release since 2021's Vicious Kisses. Inspired by Thousand Knives-era Ryuichi Sakamoto and experimental luthier Hans Reichel, the material on Plastic Jazz is electric like neon, densely layered, and '80s-obsessed. Samples of guitars and synths are chopped and screwed into intricate collages that land somewhere between avant-pop and sound art. It's Sletten's first album to utilize the sounds of Korg's MS-20 and Wavestation synths, which were emulated with VSTs and used quite liberally.

If Vicious Kisses was Sletten's love letter to '80s synthpop, Plastic Jazz represents his total deconstruction of the style. Equal parts ambient and beat-driven, the album sways between new age ("Asheville Honey," "Perpetual Myrrh") and IDM elements ("Data Erasure," "Viridian") in a tongue-in-cheek manner. It's the latest evolution of Sletten's unpredictable sound.

Psycho Narcissus Album

Release Date January 9, 2026
Label Primordial Void
Format DL

A companion album of sorts to October's Chinatown Hennessy, Marcel Sletten's Psycho Narcissus stands as an uncompromisingly dark work of ambient and industrial music. There are occasional moments of beauty to be found throughout its 11 tracks, but it's undoubtedly one of the Athens, Georgia producer's most intense releases to date.

Whereas Chinatown Hennessy paid homage to the sounds of '70s art rock and progressive electronic music, Psycho Narcissus showcases more of Sletten's own sonic signature; a unique blend of gentle ambient pads mixed with DAW-based loops and layers of skull-crushing distortion.

It's also reflective of Sletten's recent live performances, given the number of longform sample-based improvisations that appear throughout its track listing ("Thirteenth," "Preacher," "Spiritual Death").

His fifth release in under a year (sixth if you count that recent Chairs compilation), Psycho Narcissus demonstrates the feedback-driven evolution of Sletten's eclectic sound.

Chinatown Hennessy Album

Release Date October 3, 2025
Label Primordial Void
Format CD/DL

"When I had carefully considered that the misery of this life would only be ended by blissful death, I observed that human wandering on earth should be compared . . . to the restless sea, which, when churned up with agitated waves, causes incessant danger to the corporeal ship propelled here and there on an uncertain course, and causes the sailor . . . to be utterly ignorant of how he might by chance bring his ship to an unknown port of good fortune. Thus it happens that hardly one out of a thousand directs his life to that longed-for goal of happiness." — Robert Fludd

The sixth full-length album from Marcel Sletten, founder of Primordial Void and keyboardist for Athens, GA rock outfits Chairs and the Rishis. Available on CD and digital formats on October 3rd. CDs come packaged with a 4-panel layout designed by London artist and Xquisite Releases affiliate Susu Laroche. Featuring guest appearances from more eaze (Water Damage, Pink Must, whait) and Oliver Domingo (Organically Programmed, Chairs, Microtrak).

MIDI Never Sleeps Live Album

Release Date August 15, 2025
Label Primordial Void
Format DL

Serving as the Athens, GA electronic producer's first live album, Marcel Sletten's MIDI Never Sleeps chronicles a performance at local college radio station WUOG (90.5 FM), with the added bonus of a "Sister Ray" cover done at home a few days prior. Gracing the airwaves of a legendary station known for being the first to ever broadcast R.E.M. back in 1980, Sletten churns out noisy, pummeling renditions of tracks from some of his most recent releases, blending danceable IDM grooves with power noise and dark ambient freakouts.

Marcel Sletten / Ohmu Album

Release Date July 25, 2025
Label Primordial Void
Format DL

Athens, GA electronic producers Marcel Sletten and Ohmu (Winston Parker) have teamed up for a new digital-only split album. Composed of material recorded within the past year, Sletten and Ohmu explore the harshest depths of ambient and drone on their respective sides, utilizing crackly digital distortion and plugin-based freeform jamming to dazzling effect. Both sides were extracted from solo jam sessions by the artists, highlighting a distinctive sound presented by Sletten and Ohmu at their many shared live bills over the past couple years.

Sletten’s “Lipstick and Leather,” an extended live version of a track from the producer’s forthcoming Chinatown Hennessy album, is one of his most intense cuts to date, taking influence from the brutal sounds of Merzbow, Ramleh, and Tim Hecker. A chopped and screwed piano loop disintegrates under washes of low-end rumble and “virtual amplifier feedback,” which the artist describes as a “generative result of a custom VST pedalboard within Ableton, painstakingly assembled over the course of several months.”

“Mare” is a prettier ambient piece built around a Go-Betweens sample, blending sped-up guitar with layers of reverb feedback and infinite loops of echo. It’s more reflective of the melancholic folktronica sounds of Sletten’s Mammatus Clouds album, and, like most of the artist’s ambient material, was recorded in a single take.

Ohmu’s “The Three Beggars” was also born out of studio improvisation, which then led to the track being incorporated into the artist’s live set for further refining. “The main motivation stemmed from a recording of a late night singing bowl and chant session I recorded during one of our parties and I really wanted to sample that,” Ohmu writes. “There are three main sections of the song and its dark overtone really reminded me of the settings of one of my favorite films, Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, so it was named in direct homage.”

“Hexachrome Listlessness” also delves into some gorgeous, Heckerian sound design, fusing twinkly synth pads with staticky white noise and pummeling sub-bass. “A really big favorite of mine,” Ohmu says. “It came at a time where I was experiencing a lack of creativity and I felt as if I was really just watching a movie with really vibrant color grading but feeling fairly numb about everything else.”

Along with fellow PV affiliates Organically Programmed and Belgium Limp, Sletten and Ohmu are at the forefront of Athens’ minuscule yet boundary-pushing electronic scene. This split album highlights the darkest, most enticing elements of each producer’s sound, culminating in a technicolor prog-electronic symphony.

Sounds of Schmaltz Album

Release Date April 25, 2025
Label Primordial Void
Format DL

The fifth album by Athens, Georgia artist Marcel Sletten is a collection of five minimalist pieces for MIDI guitar. Recorded and improvised in one take in the early hours of May 22, 2024 at his Athens home, the five movements of Sounds of Schmaltz recall the works of Glenn Branca, Bill Orcutt, Swans, and Sletten's own neighbor Shane Parish. According to Sletten, these pieces also took inspiration from Captain Beefheart, Slint, György Ligeti, and Konrad Sprenger.

"It's essentially a live album," says Sletten. "Earlier in the day, I had been recording with the Rishis and doing some modeling work downtown, and by the time I came back home it was midnight and there was a full moon outside."

Sounds of Schmaltz is Sletten's first album to be recorded entirely using a single instrument. The producer's previous work, Mammatus Clouds, had been his folkiest to date upon its 2023 release. Tracks such as "Ghost," "Pressure Drop," and "That Means a Lot" were entirely guitar-driven, containing elements of folktronica and post-rock. "Close to You," a cut from this same album, is nothing but processed MIDI guitar, and the most similar to Sounds of Schmaltz's Americana-infused minimalism.

Sounds of Schmaltz is as much of a love letter to the guitar as it is to computer music. It represents a forward-thinking artist who manages to reinvent himself with each new release. — Otis Cash

Heather and Birch Album

Release Date September 13, 2024
Label Primordial Void
Format CD/DL

Athens, Georgia producer Marcel Sletten’s fourth album is his most intense work to date. Fusing cavernous dub techno percussion with brutal passages of harsh noise wall, Heather and Birch is a far cry from the shimmering ‘80s synths of Vicious Kisses or the melancholic folktronica of Mammatus Clouds.

The layers of screeching feedback on Heather and Birch’s nine-minute opener, “Revenant,” are at times so distorted it sounds like Sletten is attempting to break the sound barrier. While cuts such as this one, “The Long Suicide,” and “Match” are clearly inspired by certain elements of dub and industrial techno, Heather and Birch’s unique blend of dance and noise sounds closer to Pan Sonic or Ben Frost than Basic Channel or Surgeon.

“Waterfront,” the album’s Actress-esque lead single, is easily one of Sletten’s most dancefloor-ready tracks, riding a blown-out dub groove until the track climaxes with a powerful wave of distorted ambient synths, sounding a bit like MBV jamming with Huerco S.

Side B’s opener “Elizabeth St, Red Hook, NY,” inspired by a weekend trip Sletten took to the Hudson Valley village last year, recalls some of the dark ambient compositions of California Delta Blues and Irish Words, fusing new age drones with amplifier feedback. It’s the only track on Heather and Birch that you could really call “ambient”; the rest of these tunes are straight-up dark and violent takes on club music, which Sletten seems to be fully immersed in at this stage of his career.

Lamb EP

Release Date April 26, 2024
Label Primordial Void
Format DL

The third EP from Athens, Georgia’s Marcel Sletten marks a stark stylistic shift from the producer’s previous ambient works. Blown-out bass, distorted percussion, and an overall foreboding atmosphere characterize the three tracks of Lamb.

Mammatus Clouds Album

Release Date May 5, 2023
Label Primordial Void
Format CS/DL

Primordial Void is proud to present Mammatus Clouds, the third full-length album by Athens, Georgia experimentalist Marcel Sletten. Mostly recorded between November 2021 and October 2022, while Sletten was coping with the loss of his cat and the dissolution of a relationship, Mammatus Clouds is a sprawling 16-track collection of ghostly ambient, folktronica, IDM, and classical pieces that reflect the landscapes of Northern California, Sletten’s homeland, and Athens, Georgia, his new stomping grounds.

Largely inspired by local heroes Elephant 6, Mammatus Clouds is a wildly eclectic set of tracks, jumping from genre to genre at a dizzying pace. Lead single “Ghost” is a psychedelic fusion of folk and ambient music, whereas its digital B-side “Pressure Drop,” featuring Atlanta singer/songwriter Reed Winckler on vocals, is an ethereal indie ballad complete with VST guitar twang. The one-two punch of “Close to You”’s ‘90s slowcore sound and “Russian Hill”’s demented Autechre-style fuckery perfectly demonstrates Sletten’s sonic adventurism. More unexpected influences follow: “The bassline and general feel of ‘Crying’ was inspired by Sonny & Cher’s 'The Beat Goes On' and Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood’s 'Some Velvet Morning', whereas ‘Everlasting Soul’ was penned as a bit of an homage to U.S. Girls’ 'The Island Song,'” he says.

Some may view Mammatus Clouds as a sister album to Irish Words and a Bottle of Myrrh, Sletten’s 2022 “Tusk-lite” CD-R, given the two feature the same amount of tracks and explore similar themes of loss and isolation. However, Mammatus Clouds feels like yet another artistic rebirth for Sletten, as it demonstrates the Athenian oddball delving deeper into the sounds of folk and dance music with fascinating results.

Although Sletten left his heart in Northern California, Mammatus Clouds tells us that he has found solace in Athens, piecing together psychedelic pop instrumentals with a barely-operable laptop and MIDI keyboard. It’s a beautiful, strange mess that sounds unlike anything else coming out of the murky Deep South right now.

Irish Words and a Bottle of Myrrh Album

Release Date February 25, 2022
Label Primordial Void
Format CD/DL

Recorded over the course of two years, Marcel Sletten’s Irish Words and a Bottle of Myrrh is a sprawling double album that sounds unlike anything the Athens, Georgia artist has ever released. The 16-track collection possesses strong jazz and classical influences, and blends an array of styles ranging from synth funk (“Myth”) to drone metal (“Void of Light”).

"I was listening to a lot of Prince, Stevie Wonder, and Al Green during the recording of Irish Words," Sletten says. "I wanted to make an electronic album that combined the raw energy of soul music with the spirit of piano pieces by composers such as Béla Bartók and Morton Feldman."

Irish Words serves as the follow-up to last year's Vicious Kisses. The album's cover art was designed by London artist Susu Laroche.

Vicious Kisses Album

Release Date August 27, 2021
Label Sound As Language / Primordial Void
Format CS/DL

The full-length debut from Athens, Georgia-based musician Marcel Sletten is a sardonic, romantic pop album. Described by Sletten as “Whitman/Titian-meets-Elvis Costello/Nick Cave,” Vicious Kisses was mostly recorded in a single week at the artist’s home in Lodi, California. “This is my insomnia album,” Sletten says, referring to Vicious Kisses’ emotionally turbulent late-night recording sessions.

Across eight synth-heavy tracks, Vicious Kisses incorporates elements of genres such as country, dub, jazz, and synthpop. The album’s centerpiece, “Sleepless Nights,” is equally inspired by ‘80s sophisti-pop and My Bloody Valentine; meanwhile, the blissed-out “Kali Yuga” blends processed lap steel with cello drones to create a singular, melancholic sound. Psychedelic folk music for the digital age.

California Delta Blues EP

Release Date April 2, 2021
Label Primordial Void
Format DL

California Delta Blues is the second EP by electronic musician Marcel Sletten. Recorded over the course of a year, the Primordial Void founder’s latest effort collects six pieces that evolved out of his late night studies of sacred music, murder ballads, and train songs. “My work is essentially folk music with an electronic bent,” Sletten says. “I’m drawn to the way artists such as Nick Cave and Tom Waits write about death and religion, and those are themes that I explore on my new EP.”

Featuring arrangements inspired by the baroque pop of Scott Walker and Serge Gainsbourg, California Delta Blues finds Sletten moving toward a darker and more minimal sound. The artist incorporates cosmic drone music (“Angel,” “Grace Cathedral Hymn”), black metal (“Jack Nance”), and electronic lullabies (“Cosumnes River Hymn,” “Unloved”) on the 12-minute EP, weaving a rich sonic tapestry that channels the spiritual energy of his native Northern California.

Marcel Sletten EP

Release Date January 15, 2021
Label Primordial Void
Format DL

"I recorded my self-titled debut EP over the course of a year. It consists of four folk-inspired pieces that reflect my experiences traveling throughout Northern California.

I consider this release to be the first example of a new genre called Zen Americana. Rooted in my own artistic philosophy of Honest Music, the tracks contained within channel the spiritual energy of the Bay Area, California Delta, and Sierra Nevada."

—Marcel Sletten