Experimental Electronic Music
“Suumhow is what happens when two childhood friends who discovered electronic music together in their teens and then reunite 20 years later.” On the heels of their 5th album, appropriately titled 5ilth—available on n5MD October 25, 2024—Suumhow took some time out of their schedule to discuss the good old days of IDM, their backgrounds, processes, and beautifully choreographed sonic glitches.
Through the combination of coalescing emotions and natural musical extrusions, Dissolved leaves us with misleading echoes that are both reassuring and distracting, frequently simultaneously.
Both records express what has been built up to in previous outings from these artists, and they may as well be the culmination for both for now; unless there’s even more coming out this year, at which point I’d have to see which way the wind will be blowing in future releases.
The result is captivating, thoughtful, emotive, strange, and navigating through cerebral sound waves, smooth atmospherics, moody-esque sculpted improvisations to radical rhythmically-orientated and almost glitch-like experimentations.
You have to love yourself a fire surrounds itself by a plethora of abrupt breaks and distorted electro-nics; going on several tangents with low-flowing synth sections complemented by precision audio plateaus.
The sensation is not of a linear event but a cyclical one, constantly ebbing, flowing, evolving and repeating. In these pieces Davis seeks to enfold, embrace and uplift the listener with these enveloping works.
Psychic functions, postmodern poetical romanticism and paranormal phenomena are summoned to generate an absorbing, menacing, dreary, ecstatic and eerie cinematic experience.
And so we come to When Can, the strangely enigmatic and oft-overlooked collaboration between Kettel and the equally elusive Secede. I’ll admit to being as surprised as I was delighted when Lapsus announced its reissue as a deluxe vinyl edition because it’s an album I adore, so much so this is now the third time I’ve written about it.
