Live Studio Improvisations

Suss Müsik is releasing a series of live improvisations, recorded straight to 8-track in the studio. This effort (working title Non) is in conjunction with an upcoming announcement regarding Suss Müsik’s distribution of material. We’re very excited about these developments.

Anyway, the first release of the series is titled Op-Ed and was performed on treated piano, guitar, electronics, organ and percussion. It got a little crazy after a while, but this excerpt of three and a half minutes was captured nicely.

Weird Combinations

Lately, Suss Müsik has been exploring a number of odd combinations in our compositions. The latest transgression in our musical roadmap can only be described as “what would happen if Brian Eno collaborated with Black Sabbath while recording My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.” That should give you some idea of what this monstrosity sounds like. Another way to describe the piece is that it’s rough, sloppy, loud and mechanical. We really like it, of course.

The new piece obviously needs to go through a gestation period; however, this might be what Decatenation needs before its delayed release sees the light of day.

Eclipsa

“Words have a hypnotic thing about them. To me they have connotations that are kind of blinding, a buzz in my head. I picked that up from trying to be like Dylan Thomas. If you’re going to try and be like Dylan Thomas you don’t really need to make sense all the time. Understanding the noise will get you through.”

~John Cale

Eclipsa coverIt was a full moon last night. Those who work in police and emergency medical services anecdotally claim that the full moon results in busier work shifts. This perception may be rooted more in personal psychology than statistical reality, yet common knowledge insists that crisis severity is accentuated by 30-day extremes in the lunar cycle. It’s human nature.

Things have been a little crazy of late on the world stage, much like a ball of yarn unraveling to its core. Those who are paid to interpret what is happening tend to blur the distinction between fact and opinion; those who make important decisions do so under a miasma of verbiage intended to confuse, rather than explain. In our attempts to deconstruct what has been said, we apply a layer of bias to confirm intentions that may or may not exist. It’s human nature.

Suss Müsik has created a 50-minute piece that operates as both distraction and sedation. Instruments are buried under a thin veil of amplifier noise, creating a restful calm despite the unrelenting dissonance. The piece is titled Eclipsa, which means “obfuscate” in the Catalan language of eastern Spain, and is available as a free download on SoundCloud or BandCamp.

A final thought: according to a 1968 essay by Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas believed that William Butler Yeats was the greatest poet of his generation. The following verse from Yeats’ “The Second Coming” seems eerily prescient:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Update 01/16/17: Due to the album’s popularity on Bandcamp, Suss Müsik has exceeded our monthly allocation of free download credits. We’ve set a low price of $2 USD until our credits refresh on 02/15/17, at which point we’ll again offer the album as a free download for one month or until credits run out. Suss Müsik sincerely thanks everyone for their continued interest in what we do — hope you enjoy it.

Disquiet Junto Project 0257: Remember Noisevember [repost]

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 fans (all seven of them) might be surprised to learn that Suss Müsik loves noise. We grew up on sweaty punk rock, after all, and our explorations in ambient minimalism are often the result of careful distillation, filtered over time from origins of pure dissonance. Our saxophonist is a disciple of Pharoah Sanders, creating squalls of atonal mayhem that prevents the final output from becoming too docile.

Peter Hammill once said, “Too much politeness in music — whatever style of music it is — is usually very bad news.” Noise isn’t simply a matter of turning up the distortion and letting’er rip. We are reminded of the music of Faust, Einstürzende Neubauten, Diamanda Galas, Negativland, Luigi Russolo, even the post-classical works of Henry Cowell and Igor Stravinsky, all of whom employ chaos and confrontation as an artistic prerogative.

Suss Müsik has been known to use power tools and other machinery in our compositions, and we’re not averse to banging the odd sheet of metal when the mood strikes.This short piece starts with the sound of a Dewalt DW745 table saw coupled with a digital synth organ. The composite was run through a Korg Toneworks 411fx into a Vox Valvetronix amp and recorded straight to disk.

The metallic sounds were created by hammering scraps of pipe and aluminum sheeting found around the workshop. A Scream distortion filter (with generous clipping) added a bit of fuzz and dampened the piercing higher frequencies. The little 4-note phrase at the end was looped while our ears recovered from all the clanging. It was great fun.