Cell’s Sloblo: The ’92 Record That Kicked Dirt in Your Face

Let me be clear: I didn’t discover SloBlo. I dug it up—like a half-buried, busted cassette in the back of some decaying storage unit. Because that’s what this album feels like. A thing the industry forgot to burn. An artifact that somehow slipped through the cracks of the grunge gold rush and managed to survive in the static.

It’s not on Spotify. Not on Apple Music. I had to listen to it on YouTube, one grainy track at a time. And that wasn’t enough. I hunted down a used vinyl copy on eBay the same night. This wasn’t a casual “add to cart” situation. This was panic. That album needed to be in my hands. It’s that good.

The band is called Cell—born out of the New York noise swamp in the early ’90s, and yep, they’ve got that fuzzed-out guitar wall and slacker-stare vocals that’ll make lazy critics slap a “grunge” sticker on the cover and walk away. But SloBlo* doesn’t belong in a scene. It doesn’t belong anywhere. That’s why it rules.

This record is thick with texture. Guitars don’t just chime or wail—they bleed. Every riff sounds like it’s being played underwater, with layers that rise and fall like your head’s turning slowly inside a fever dream. “Stratosphere” opens the album and sets the tone: you’re either on board for the ride or you’re not. No hooks thrown your way. No radio play bait. Just sound—rich, heavy, hypnotic.

Produced by John Siket, the engineer behind Sonic Youth’s Dirty, the album carries the same instinct to let feedback breathe and imperfections sprawl. But what really gives SloBlo* its underground halo is the co-sign from Thurston Moore, who released their first 7” on his Ecstatic Peace! label. That’s not a throwaway anecdote—it’s a flare in the sky. Thurston fucking got them. He heard what I heard.

And then—nothing. A second album came (Living Room), and by ’95, Cell was gone. No resurgence. No reunion tour. No Pitchfork reissue review ten years too late. SloBlo* just sat there, dusty and overlooked, like the rest of us stuck in the middle of scenes that never wanted us.

Even critics at the time didn’t get it. Entertainment Weekly trashed it. Said it was “proudly tuneless.” Said the drumming was muffled. I say good. Music isn’t supposed to sound clean when it’s bleeding the truth. If you need your angst wrapped in pretty EQ curves and corporate polish, look elsewhere. SloBlo* was never built for your playlists.

But here’s the thing. You hear this album at the right moment—in the dark, on real speakers, with some volume—and it doesn’t just hit. It seeps. Like smoke under the door. You start noticing how the guitars on “Cross the River” don’t follow the rules. How “Tundra” feels like falling through ice. How even the softer tracks pulse with some kind of leftover violence.

You don’t need to know Cell’s full story to feel this record. You don’t need to know the band members (Jerry DiRienzo, Ian James, David Motamed, and Keith Nealy, for the record) or where they ended up. You just need ears. And a little hunger.

Because SloBlo* isn’t made for passive listening. It demands your attention. It’s for people who’ve been scouring Discogs for an album that never charted, or clicking through YouTube comments hoping someone else is having the same revelation. It’s for those of us who want to feel something before it disappears again.

I don’t want to overhype it. But I kind of do. Because maybe if someone had shouted louder about this record back then, we’d be talking about Cell the way we talk about Hum or Catherine or even early Pumpkins. But the truth is, SloBlo* is better because it slipped through. It’s unspoiled. Unclaimed.

And now I’ve got it on vinyl. One of the last good copies floating around. Thurston’s blessing is on the spine. The grooves are still clean. And every time I drop the needle, it’s like the signal gets picked up again—for a minute—before it fades back into the static.