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Sonomu : An High Land
Sound artist Philip Sulidae wraps his latest release in the neat folds of the whitest white construction paper, but the sounds contained therein are absolutely caked with dirt and grime.
Most of the six tracks on An High Land appear to be named after places in his native Australia, some which sound downright unpleasant: “Nighthill”, “Dead Horse Gap”. And though highly distinct from one another; each evokes the heaviest, rustiest, industrial behemoths scraping against crags as old as time itself, carving out rough new escarpments. A singular combination of man-made and organic, or rather geological.
A third element is comprised of the extra terrestrial signals which show up where least expected, surely emanating from some unimaginably distant exoplanet. This finishing touch, such a small detail, is what tips the album from being an excellent exercise in industrial ambient to a triumph beyond genre.
It is music that could probably bring down inclement weather.
- Stephen Fruitman
Wonderful Wooden Reasons : An High Land
Wow, this is bleak. Australian Sulidae has easily topped his previous foray into the outer realms of decaying post-industrial ennui with a thoroughly haggard and cold excursion into post-apocalyptic grey entropy. Managing to stay just the right side of the noise ghetto, Sulidae uses field recordings, organ and a sampler to nice effect to produce a wall of sound that forces itself from the speakers. It’s a punishing set and in all honesty not one I’ll be returning to often as I generally prefer music that is a little less austere, but as an exploration into the deep dark depths of what the dark ambient / noise field can produce this is a worthy addition.
- Ian Holloway
Rare Frequency : An High Land
This limited edition CDr by Philip Sulidae, a musician/sound artist from Australia, is one of those happy surprises. One day it just arrived in my mailbox. A plain white wrapper with two grainy photo cards and paper slip with all the basic information. The music itself is grainy, a tad noisy, and abidingly lovely. While there are hints of melody, they exist within a gauzy, howling haze. It’s the deliberate atmospheric disturbance that gives the proceedings their hallucinatory allure. There are discernible sources—field recordings, guitar, feedback— but they are subsumed within a roiling miasma of sound. Sulidae’s work is akin to that of Tim Hecker and Christian Fennesz, but stripped of any musical clichés.
- Susanna Bolle
Vital Weekly : An High Land
More music by Philip Sulidae, of whom we reviewed two 3″CDRs before (see Vital Weekly 692) and a release on Ripples (see Vital Weekly 709). This new one he calls a work of ‘burnt and weathered audio relics’, recorded using field recordings, organ and sampler. The release on Ripples show him moving towards the land of drones, which is also what is at work here. But the six pieces here all seem a bit more rougher edged. I have no idea what burnt and weathered relics are, although I can imagine. Maybe he buried some tape in his backyard and let nature to the processing? Maybe I am guessing too much. The drones on this release are not those which lull the listener into a deep sleep, but rather have some great tension underpinning the whole. There seems to be some sort of loops going on, odd sounds (which I first thought to be coming from outside actually, always good to be fooled) which aren’t easy to be traced back to any origin. Some sturdy processing was applied, which makes this whole thing quite mysterious. Not entirely a new approach, but done with great care.
- Frans De Waard
Vital Weekly : The Cause of Others
Philip Sulidae released two 3″CDRs on his own dontcaresulidae label (reviewed in Vital Weekly 692) and hails from Australia. Here he has full length release of his work with field recordings that are crafted into drone like textures. Its a continuation of his work released earlier. Very dark drone like material, with slow, peaceful gestures, that however bear little light in them. Its hard to say if its just field recordings or whether there is any use of instruments to accompany the field recordings. I’m sure it doesn’t matter very much.
The music is quite nice in all its minimally varying subtlety. There is nothing new as such under this dark night, not compared to the previous two releases of Sulidae, but also its part of a tradition of dark drone meisters, such as Mirror, Ora and that particular UK scene. Sulidae however crafts pieces that are as equally good and ‘The Cause Of Others’ is damn fine release.
- Frans De Waard
Foxy Digitalis : Unknow
If you had to slap a label on Australian sound artist Philip Sulidae’s “Unknow” maybe minimal ambient drone would work. This 3’’ CDr makes for elusive quarry; not so much dodging attempts at understanding as disallowing projected thoughts any substantial surface for interaction . . Opener “3300ff.3399cc.003399” is like smoke displayed in rays of light or a recording of the shadows cast by sound. Next is “000099.0066cc.66ccff,” totally nebulous like the first track but sharper at its edges. At six minutes, closer “0000cc.ccccff.99cccc” is the longest and track and also the fullest. It has hints of submerged oscillations and some subtle tonal variances that prove interesting.
I’m not sure if I’m taking it as the composer intended, but, to me, this brief album is an attempt to display emptiness via sound. Aside from a few exceptions, working in total silence prevents the listener from knowing to listen. Paradoxically, there needs to be enough substance to show what isn’t there. This short record treads liminal waters somewhere at either the very beginning or end of sound. With only a few subdued minutes of listening I’m not sure which. 7/10
- Mike Pursley
Tokafi : The Blacken Solver and Unknow
With its sensually simmering and subtly shimmering chord sequences, The Blacken Solver opens with two nocturnal soundscapes somewhere between dream and delirium. As harmonies contract and expand in cycles of tension and relaxation, Sulidae counterpoints their elegiac yearning with a dense fog of cool crackle. By juxtaposing acoustic events both very near and extremely far away and applying different degrees of reverb, the result is an unreal conglomerate that feels both perfectly tranquil and unsettlingly nervous – this is high-tension music at the border of perception. Closer “Baralku”, on the other hand, has a distinct touch of early Krautrock to it: Thick, majestically resonant Organ-clusters are hovering mid-air in monolithic splendour, swelling and ebbing away in brutish elegance. Towards the end, gnawing and chewing noises evoke a fairytale-like sequence, before leading into a prolonged coda and, ulitmately, silence.
At slightly under twenty minutes’ length, The Black Solver still appears almost epic compared to the mere quarter of an hour of Unknow. And yet, it is probably this release which sums up Sulidae’s concepts about composition best. The idea of fore and background segueing into each other is explored even more radically here and rather than using hypnotic repetition as a driving force, he places his motives for no longer than a few second and then carefully observes their echoes as they gently ripple through subsequent waves of sound and noise. On “3300ff.3399cc.003399″, a quietly anthemic theme rises from a busy street scene only to quickly disappear again. Its reverberations, though, can be felt until the end of the piece, influencing the course of the music until the last note has died down. It is a recurring motive in the other tracks as well: cause and effect are of central importance here, their typical relations appearing confused and contorted: Seemingly small events can turn out to have seminal influence, while outwardly essential indications simply disappear.
- Tobias Fischer
Wonderful Wooden Reasons : The Blacken Solver and Unknow
Two mini sets of cosmic isolationist tone and drone from this Australian musician whose music links lonely tones with a subtly derelict post-industrial melancholy.
Unknow’s three tracks are an absolute joy. They conjure images of loss and abandonment that leave one feeling distinctly uneasy.
The Blacken Solver contrary to what it’s title would lead you to believe is the more open and psychedelic of the two. Here he has sacrificed much of the cloying atmospherics and replaced them with a more expansive and expressive palette that makes wider use of the sounds available to him.
- Ian Holloway
Sonomu : The Blacken Solver and Unknow
Australian sound artist Philip Sulidae issues two small white slabs of dark, dense experimental ambient on twin, three-inch CDRs, each lovingly slid into black-on-grey, flocked paper sleeves. His chief means are field recordings, organ, and “synthesis”.
The Blacken Solver is gloomy, beautiful, fidgeting uncomfortably as it waits for its luck to change. The second of two untitled tracks crackles and rumbles more deeply in a space with the acoustics of an aluminium air shaft. The closing eight-minute track “Baralku” looms and searches, gnawing through the rubble and the gravel. A very tactile track.
On its companion volume, “Unknow”, Sulidae claims to find “light among the pervasive haze”, and indeed, the sum of the whole seems an attempt to move upward, like a shoot straining at the soil and longing for the sun.
- Stephen Fruitman
Vital Weekly : The Blacken Solver and Unknow
Two 3″ CDR releases, nicely packed in a sort of hard fabric cover by someone of whom I never heard, Philip Sulidae. He is from Australia. Both releases have three tracks. ‘The Blacken Solver’ has three tracks of great ambient drone quality. They are created with field recordings, organ and synthesis. Highly drone based of course, but with a bit of noise to it, especially in ‘Baralku’, it borders almost on the edge of distortion, but it doesn’t. Slow moving music, shady dark textures, deep atmospherics. That kind of thing.
For ‘Unknow’ it says ‘constructed from samples, keys and synthesis’, and also has three tracks (though in total a few minutes shorter), and its hard to point out the finer differences between both releases. They are there, ‘Unknow’ seems a bit more reduced in approach I think, but then its not difficult to hear that they were recorded by the same person. Good fine ambient music with a touch of dark drones woven neatly into this. Nothing new in that area, but done with utmost care and precision. Nice covers too.
- Frans De Waard
