Joseph Suchy — Calabi. Yau
Suchy lives in Colognbe and has been making music for more than 25 years. His instrument of choice: guitar. He is a producer of electronic and world music and a member of Burnt Friedmann’s nu dub players. Suchy has worked with countless luminaries of the experimental and electronic music scenes: the aforementioned Ehlers and Ziegler but also Hrvatski, David Grubbs, Niobe, FX Randomiz among countless others. He also has a hand in the great Grob label.
Calabi. Yau is his latest solo release. It’s most of all a very varied album of guitar music. Suchy uses the guitar in many different ways. You have tracks that are pretty much “ballads”, with just a simple theme on acoustic guitar. Other tracks are more on the ambient side, with loads of delay, long-sustain and drones but remain, at least a little, harsh enough for them not to sound to dull. A few tracks have an improv “vibe”, asking the spirit of Derek Bailey to keep an eye on the proceedings, so to speak… A couple of other songs are more on the noisy side, although quite tame, not to aggressive, which means that even with its abrasive sides, this album can be listened to while “meditating”. I use this word because, on some of the songs, there is a real feeling that makes me think of Asian spiritualities. The most obvious example is Soan-ne, a track build upon the sound of wind-bells and sounding very –God, I hate using that word (I’m not sure what it really means, us from the west have been using all those eastern concepts with such poor knowledge for so long)- zen. Mainly guitar-oriented, Suchy uses quite a few other instruments though: all sorts of bells, percussions and electronics and who knows what else is buried under the drones… Oh and there also are some vocals on one of the tracks.
Calabi. Yau is a very nice album. Its main qualities: never mind how much you listen to it, it remains surprising and intriguing; it also has a very mystique vibe which is nice and rare (thousands of bands try to be mystique, but Suchy manages to be that seemingly without even trying); the versatility of Suchy’s technique is really impressive.
I can’t end this review without mentioning Moo-ay, an absolutely beautiful track on which Suchy plays a simple yet really mind-blowing theme with a few bell sounds and drones in the background. Very, very, very good. It reminds me of some of the tracks on the latest House of low culture album. Browse through our archive and read the review, you will soon see how much I love the HOLC album and then understand how much I love this Calabi. Yau track…