Lost Lake Presents Slow Joy with NVM and Creek on Saturday, March 22nd.
When Esteban Flores started releasing singles under the moniker Slow Joy in 2020, it didn’t take long for his music to gain momentum. In particular, a pair of 2022 singles, “Crawling” and “Soft Slam,” connected with fans thanks to an evocative, sensitive combination of soaring space rock, noisy shoegaze and dynamic post-rock. “I only shared my music because I wanted people to hear it, not because I was trying to get a career,” Flores says. “Lo and behold, the universe then let me have a career out of it.”
Despite this initial success, before the release of Slow Joy’s debut EP, 2023’s Wildflower, Flores was unsure whether he wanted to continue doing music. He was working in marketing and looking at settling down, buying a house and exploring other hobbies. But while talking with a therapist to process his mother’s death, Flores had a change of heart. “I told my therapist, ‘I keep wanting to write songs, but I know it’s not good for me,’” he says. “And she was like, ‘Why is it not good for you?’ And once it clicked in my head that it wasn’t a pursuit, it was an art project, I realized, ‘Oh, okay, this is the music that actually matters to me.’”
The passion and heart that Flores pours into Slow Joy shine even brighter on his second EP, Mi Amigo Slow Joy. Although the EP’s underlying influences are similar as that of past releases, the arrangements are crisper and each instrument is more defined within the simmering mixes. This leads to poppier moments such as the fuzz-coated “4U” and a towering chorus on the Foo Fighters-meets-Pixies “Pulling Teeth,” while the sonic highs and lows of “Lay Me Out, I’m Out of My Mind” and the urgent, anguished “King Cowboy,” are bigger and more emotional.
“I always say there’s a beautiful art in making a song so simple—or so distilled, I guess is a better way to say that—that even a person who wasn’t into your other stuff would understand it,” Flores says. “Instead of writing the most complicated song, it’s like, ‘How do I distill this emotion to the simplest form so it has a depth and gravity that anybody will feel?”
At a recent sold-out homecoming show in Albuquerque, Flores saw the profound impact Slow Joy is having on others. “I had a line of people come up and tell me that it meant so much to them that I was championing this culture in this scene,” he says. “And I think as we all continue to evolve for a better future, we try to just continue to represent ourselves and our culture as much as we possibly can. To me, the more representation, the better. And I’m thankful that the people who felt maybe like I did can now have more archetypes that they can say, ‘Well, if he can do it, then someone else can do it.’”
- All ages, ticketed guests under 16 ONLY ADMITTED WITH TICKETED GUARDIAN 21+
- All sales are final. Check your tickets carefully, NO REFUNDS FOR ANY REASON
- Your name will be on the Will Call list the night of the show at doors time.