Anthony Childs
If synths were ovens, this is would be one of your frequented all-night diners serving up tasty, quick meals to satisfy the appetite after leaving the club and on the way home (or equally, when you are already home and just have a craving for the house special appetizers and you call ahead for a pick up order).
Favorite track: Clusters.
AB
Beautiful fractal like sonics full of wonder and joy. Like harnessing the passing of time and the seasons in a rain drop in the palm of your hand...
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The debut album Formations for Sunhaus embraces colourful clusters of ambient textures, complex forms and paints a synthetic but familiar abstraction. The album’s eight compositions sprawl just over 34 minutes and is largely driven by handbuilt synthesizers, various music devices, with interests in polyrhythmic melodies, generative music, lush textures and processing.
The ambient album is a soft-spoken clash of colours set adrift, an abstract painting, synthetic, glitch-driven and processed. Formations rearranges, overlaps, and weaves its own swirling meditative sound of sine waves, piano, field recordings, deconstruction and abstraction, all stitched back together into a colourful tapestry of beautiful disorder.
Composed during September 2021, the first Sunhaus track Pleng softly opens the album with waves of fragments and textures, unbound to a familiar beat. Clear tones ring out, skip and glitch. Melodies broken apart into soft digital explosions.
"Life’s little pleasures include opening the blinds in the morning, watching the snow fall, and seeing sunlight glittering off the dew. Sunhaus‘s debut album sounds like all these and more, and becomes yet another little pleasure. Written by an Australian composer living in Thailand, released on an American label, this tape has traveled the world like the wandering sun.
The tracks can be divided into two main categories: the sparkling glitch pieces and the flowing ambient works. Each hearkens back to some of the gorgeous glitch of the 90s, while bearing a modern tone. As a good part of the music is generative, it also conjures comparison to the light installations whose patterns begin to unfurl when touched by the rays of the sun. The ear begins to dvine a melody, only to hear it disappear down a rabbit hole, much like the tubes on the cover. In like fashion, unexpected harmonies are produced when the patterns line up just right.
“Pleng” bursts out the gate, far louder than expected, offering a hint of tempo through thin electronic beats; a similar climate is visited in “Glam,” which suggests the (pre-breakup) roster of raster-noton and the early work of Dntel. The ambient washes of “Peace Dust” recede to reveal the glint of bell tones. Static makes a friendly visit to “Neess,” sounding much better as music than as intrusion. But with music so impressionistic, it’s less about tracks than tone. Sunhaus does indeed sound like a sun house, or a crystal pendant twirling in the window in mid-afternoon, casting its colors around the room as a happy cat chases the shards."
A CLOSER LISTEN
"The music of Sunhaus is warm and undulating, filled with shimmering textures and elongated drones. It’s textural ambient music, where the digital waves wash gently against each other, split and become something new. Strangely it feels like a natural process, like the audio equivalent of how sand is created or something. It’s a place where the microtonal has been elevated, where random electrics can be harnessed into a sweet intoxicating dopamine rush, where notes are less about melody or sequence than texture. It’s feels more like a Japanese garden than an album of composed music. It’s a dense and beautiful world, a gentle bath of glitched out ambience."
CYCLIC DEFROST
credits
released January 28, 2022
Music and artwork by Marcus Skinner.
Recorded in Thonglor, 2021
Limited Edition cassette artwork by Thana Pai Saengsorn
Skinner is an Australian composer, musician, artist and builder currently living in Bangkok, Thailand. Working under the alias of Sunhaus, he focuses on the exploration of generative melodies/harmonies, techniques in structure, and experimentation into electronic music. Designing, hand-building and coding synthesizers [Sunbox], primitive music devices and effects are the nucleus, and releasing short freeform social media music videos of unfinished jams, termed ‘Sketches of Ambient Minimalism’ are the release. Producing experimental sounds that touch on Electronic Music, Electronica, Ambient, Glitch, Noise, Generative Music and the outer limits.
Sunhaus can be found on: Instagram, Bandcamp, Patreon, Spotify, Youtube & Reverb.
license
Marcus Skinner is a composer, musician and sound artist working under the alias of Sunhaus, with the focus on exploration of
hand-built music devices, polyrhythms, generative music, ambient textures and processing. Sunhaus weaves a colourful tapestry of meditative sound that is a swirl of patterns, artifacts and textures....more
Beautifully conceived, uncluttered. Perfect for the times you absolutely positively need to slow down, or when you know someone else who does. There are, of course, many, many recordings similar to this. Somehow, this release feels notable and worthy of your attention. Also perfect for those who gravitate to the healing ambient or healing qualities of music.Tell your friends. Better yet, tell your enemies. They may need this even more. Anthony Childs
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The third album from Brussels musician Juanita uses haunting ambient/electronic songs to reflect a world in turmoil. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 11, 2021
Evocative, heartfelt and totally awe-inspiring. A true wizard of his craft, thanks for sharing this Derek and Mystery Circles, I look forward to the cassette arriving, take good care and congratulations my friend Samuel Death (tides)