James Tabbi has embarked on a new and thrilling chapter with the debut of Slow Slow Slow, his first solo album since working with The Heroic Enthusiasts. The song is a collaboration with Ben Hillier, and it shows a darker, more intimate side of his songwriting, delving into the themes of emotional fatigue, susceptibility and the catharsis of giving in to your emotions.
The song is rooted in a deep, earthy style of electronics, slow moving synths and atmospheric production; allowing the song to envelop you with natural emotions. Rather than heading for a catchy moment, it immerses listeners in a world of sadness, where the music, the lyrics and the atmosphere all combine to create a beauty of letting go.
The single is also the first listening to Tabbi’s upcoming album, A Temporary Resident, which was influenced by transition, isolation, and surrender. He is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, recording engineer and remixer with a keen interest in sound design and creative exploration in every moment of the music.
Mister Styx of Music Arena GH caught up with James Tabbi for this interview, which covers the inspiration behind the track “Slow Slow Slow” and the limits of creativity when the music is a collaboration between him and Ben Hillier as well as the creative freedom of being a solo artist and what the listener can expect from Tabbi’s album.
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“Slow Slow Slow” marks your first solo release after your work with The Heroic Enthusiasts. What inspired you to take this step into your solo career?
You know, being a part of The Heroic Enthusiasts is an incredible honor and experience, but I had a set of darker, insular ideas that simply couldn’t live in a shared room. I needed a space where I was solely responsible for the atmosphere, the grit, and the emotional weight. Stepping out on my own wasn’t about leaving the band behind—it was about honoring a compulsion to have total autonomy over the air in the room, from the initial synth patch to the mix.
The song explores the tension between fighting an emotional current and finally surrendering to it. What personal or creative idea sparked that theme?
Honestly, it started with recognizing the sheer exhaustion of constant resistance. We spend so much energy trying to keep our emotional perimeters intact. The song lives at that pivot point where fatigue overtakes fear—the moment you decide just to let the water take you.
There’s a lyric in the song about asking the other person to “snare the heart” and “dredge my soul.” It’s a terrifying ask, but there’s an immense relief in that kind of surrender in saying, “pull me into your flow.” I wanted to capture that strange beauty in giving up the fight.
You just described the song as capturing a melancholic and vulnerable moment of letting yourself be completely pulled into another person. How did you translate that feeling into the music?
It meant grounding every technical choice in that feeling of being pulled under. I set the tempo to an unhurried 85 bpm so the track could breathe heavily, and loaded the low end with detuned, slow-moving synth pads. When I sing about “swimming in the depths of you,” the delays and reverbs deliberately trail off just a bit too long, creating an uncomfortable, beautiful dissonance. The music doesn’t try to entertain or rush you—it slowly draws you under.
You co-produced “Slow Slow Slow” with Ben Hillier. What made Ben the right person to help shape the sound of this new project?
Ben just inherently understands how to manipulate darkness without suffocating a track. We share a very specific language when it comes to texture and atmosphere. I needed someone who could take my very dense stems and help me strip them back to give them musical weight and dimension. That sounds like a contradiction, but it was exactly what I needed.
Ben doesn’t polish things to death, which I love. He knows exactly how to preserve the grit and the experimental edges while still carving out a clear, massive, cinematic space in the mix.
You wanted to create an atmospheric landscape with an analog feel within a digital world. How did you approach the production and instrumentation to achieve that sound?
That really came down to a lot of sonic experimentation and exploration. Out of the box, I leaned on the Moog Muse and the Behringer DeepMind 12 for many of the core harmonic beds, but I spent most of my time inside the box with a whole bunch of complex synth plug-ins.
For example, Native Instruments Massive X and Rob Papen’s Predator 3 are key elements of this album’s sound. The depth and breadth of sound design that you can explore with just those two tools are incredible. And layering those digital synths with the analog Moog and Behringer contributed to the sound we ultimately achieved.
“Slow Slow Slow” is the first glimpse of your forthcoming album, A Temporary Resident. What does this single reveal about the album’s musical direction and atmosphere?
It sets the baseline temperature for the entire record. A Temporary Resident is an exploration of transition, isolation, and surrender—ideas that took shape while walking through the 2024 Venice Biennale, whose theme was “Foreigners Everywhere.” “Slow Slow Slow” signals right away that this isn’t a collection of standard pop songs; it’s an atmospheric, moody world bathed in deep electronics that you have to sit inside for a while.
Moving from The Heroic Enthusiasts into your first solo album represents a significant creative change. What have you discovered about yourself as an artist through this process?
I discovered just how much I love getting lost in the weeds of sound design when no one else is in the room. Without the safety net of a group, I had to put my voice right out front and embrace a darker, far more vulnerable aspect of my songwriting. I realized I’m just as passionate about building evocative, immersive atmospheres as I am about writing a catchy hook.
You have worked as a multi-instrumentalist, recording engineer, producer, and remixer. How have these different roles influenced the way you approach your own music?
I have really spent a lot of focused time learning the depths of Avid Pro Tools. So the technical barrier between my imagination and my DAW is pretty seamless. I write, edit, and produce with the final mix in mind. I’m carving out frequency pockets and manipulating the sonic cube at the composition stage rather than trying to fix issues later in the mix. For me, the technical fluency just serves the art.
The project follows your remix collaborations with artists including Kristine W, David Cloyd and Head to the Roots. How did those experiences influence your creative approach to this new material?
Remixing—especially projects like David Cloyd’s “Cage of Water”—taught me the art of creative deconstruction. When you remix, you often strip away the entire harmonic and rhythmic context and build a completely new world around a core vocal take. Applying that mindset to my own writing was incredibly liberating. I learned not to be precious about my initial arrangements. If the atmosphere isn’t right, I know I can just dismantle the whole thing and rebuild it.
As “Slow Slow Slow” introduces listeners to A Temporary Resident, what do you hope people feel or understand when they experience this new chapter of your music?
I hope it permits them to lower their guard. I want the music to act as a physical space they can inhabit, literally as a temporary resident, where the pressure to fight the current is suspended. As the lyrics say, sometimes you just want someone to “thread the heart” and “steal your soul.” I want listeners to be able to just exist in the melancholy for a few minutes and feel okay doing it.
