- RELEASED: 01 May 2000 / 04 Sept 2000
- FORMAT: 2xLP / CD / 10″ / 12″ / CDS
- LABEL: NINJA TUNE
- CAT No.: ZEN48 / ZENCD48 / ZEN1092 / ZEN1294 / ZENCDS94
- DESIGN: Openmind
- SPOTTERS DELIGHT: There was a promo CD of Slowly designed for the US territory but it’s not certain if it was actually manufactured
- EXTRA ZEN: Supermodified / Slowly / 4 Ton Mantis
Whilst on tour in LA in ’99 I was walking around the downtown district near our hotel and found another sculpture by Alexander Liberman, this time it was white and on display in the financial district outside some office blocks. I photographed it just because I liked the shapes but didn’t want to repeat the same trick for another album. What I ended up doing was layering up the images – similar to that I had done on ‘Permutation’ – using transparency filters to bring parts through each photo from underneath except, instead of two layers I had ten or more.
There are about 20 different transparency filters in Photoshop, each doing different things, some more subtle than others, and by moving around layers or making certain ones invisible there are an infinite number of results that you can get from this process. I did endless shifting and filtering with Amon sitting in beside me, and saved each one that we thought looked good before carrying on, knowing that I would never find my way back to something we liked before. We ended up with something like 20 different images that I used across covers for both singles, the album and the inner sleeves. Amon liked the images where forms seemed to be emerging and I can always see amorphous robots hidden in the images when I look at it. Again, the inner sleeves join up and, if you look closely, you can see a street sign reflected in one of the background windows which gives away the location of the sculpture.