Someone suggested that Suss Müsik repost our contributions to the weekly Disquiet Junto projects, because they enjoy reading the explanations of the tracks. While you’re reading the original post, make sure you check out the other contributors’ works as well.
Suss Müsik knows all about insomnia for the mentally fragile. We’ll spare you the details, other than to say this: when one is dedicated to the craft of “post-classical ambient minimalism for crepuscular airports,” exploring the nuance between dusk and dawn is something of an occupational necessity. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.
“I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain / Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper’s eye,” writes the poet Dylan Thomas. “There grows the hours’ ladder to the sun / Each rung a love or losing to the last.” These two couplets succinctly describe the duality of insomnia, which in Suss Müsik’s experience takes two forms.
The first form of insomnia is a woozy precipice between not quite being asleep or awake — not exactly alert, yet consciously aware that time is passing. The second form (usually following the first) is a whirlpool of cognitive dissonance: the body may be tired, but the brain actively rages at an endless cycle of unanswerable questions. How many years do I have left? Did I remember to pay the insurance? Do I have cancer? What’s that sound downstairs? Who or what is touching my leg?
For this piece, Suss Müsik sought to represent both forms of insomnia through sound. The piece begins with the insistent tempo of a CR-78 drum machine, which signifies the ticking of a clock, its rhythm punctuated by jabs of piano. A field of electronic fog slowly emerges from within and builds to a quiet roar. With the whine of a saxophone, everything retreats back into the subconscious. The ticking CR-78 returns to close things out.
The piece is titled Chiasmus, named after a grammatical structure in which a phrase is reversed with no repetition in words. Next time you have insomnia, try to list as many of these as you can remember from when you were in school.