textura

Albums
Cory Allen
Belong
Bio / Larkian / Autistes
Black Swan
James Brewster
C.H. District
Crazy Penis
Robert Crouch
Demdike Stare
d'incise
Cezary Gapik
Ron Geesin
G. Night & G. Morning
Tim Hecker
Hole Punch Generation
Hopeless Local M. Band
E. De Jesus / Minus Pilots
Saito Koji
Kontakte
Little Fritter
MaCu
Sam Moss
Dustin O'Halloran
Olekranon
Örsten
Phillips / Hesse-Honegger
Pleq
Maceo Plex
Pietro Riparbelli
Salva
Shaula
Spartak
Daniel Steinberg
Colin Stetson
Subtle Lip Can
Tapage & Meander
Robert Scott Thompson
Ultralyd
Simon Whetham

Compilations / Mixes
DJ Bone
Pop Ambient 2011
Silence Was Warm Vol. 3
Superlongevity 5
v-p v-f is v-n
Werkschau

EPs
Benoit & Sergio
Mark Bradley
Eluvium
Encomiast
Ragle Gumm
Tevo Howard
Isnaj Dui
Clem Leek
Luv Jam
offthesky & Ten and Tracer
Sleeps In Oysters
Nobuto Suda
Totem Test
Morgan Zarate

Nobuto Suda: Sensitive Fields
Tobira Records

To say Kyoto, Japan-based Nobuto Suda has been productive of late is an obvious understatement. Five recordings appeared in 2010: Bottom of Pocket on Rural Colours, Ecotone on Somehow-Recordings, and three on on Tobira Records (the label he co-manages with Hakobune), Bloom, Garden of Ghosts, and now Sensitive Fields, which splits two twenty-minute settings across the C40 cassette's sides (fifty copies).

“Sensitive Fields” is an epic vaporous ambient-drone of the celestial kind characterized by immense swells of gauzy and gaseous form. Similar in style, side B's “Blue of Sky” is, if anything, even more epic in the relentlessness of its intensity and majestic radiance. All kinds of muffled sounds emanate from the tracks' centers, almost as if they're struggling to break free from their respective vortices. The material largely remains at a consistent pitch and billows at the level of a controlled roar or howl but isn't abrasive in the way such terms might suggest. Given the ethereal nature of Sensitive Fields' material, it would be easy to imagine it being used to accompany the sequence near the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey where Dave Bowman's spaceship hurtles across the vast reaches of space, witnessing heavily saturated colour landscapes on unnamed planets and other cosmological phenomena as he does so.

February 2011