Sam Slater is a two-time Grammy Award-winning composer, sound designer, and music producer, who since 2013 has been busy working on a range of projects behind the scenes for screen, stage, live and recorded mediums. His new album, I Do Not Wish To Be Known As A Vandal, is released via Bedroom Community. Receiving the awards for his roles as both score producer and musical sound designer on the box office smash Joker (2019) and the Golden Globe and Emmy-winning drama series, Chernobyl (2019), Slater is a frequent collaborator with acclaimed Icelandic musician/composer, Hildur Guðnadóttir. He has produced, mixed and engineered projects for artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Colin Stetson, Ben Frost, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Mica Levi, and more. When it came to the recording of I Do Not Wish To Be Known As A Vandal, Slater called on a number of creative forces. Recorded remotely, each musician would send a sound, some words, some creative parameters, and Slater would respond in turn. Hildur Guðnadóttir provided distinct Doro phone sounds, Yair Glotman played thunderous double-bass, and Hilary Jeffrey and Sam Dunscombe laid down woodwind and microtonal brass. In addition, Icelandic singer-songwriter JFDR delivered her intimate vocals and James Ginzburg (Emptyset) mixed it, with an ear for precise form. From his base in Berlin, Slater would flag the sounds he loved; some twitching strings, the stolen alto voice from an abandoned English chorale, some words from a climate scientist fleshed into a poem. It became an exercise in receptivity, in which openness itself became a creative voice, hushing Slater's tendency to micromanage every detail. The album showcases the breadth of Slater's range as composer and producer, transitioning through distinctly different spaces, from the glitchy, clipped intro, into Icelandic folktronica, into swathes of menacing string mutations and eerie, mournful woodwind.