Net Feature/ Sudio: "Sheets of Sound"

Outbursts of ectoplasma inside a feverish galaxy: A minimal approach coupled it with a feel of great musicality.

“House Music is Zen”, Ideology claim in their artist biography for German artist Sudio – which one is first inclined to either file as a bold claim or a banale effort of trying to capture the uplifting experience of loosing oneself completely in the hypnotic magic of a four to the floor beat. After listening to “Sheets of Sound”, though, that statement somehow has some justification after all.

At least it does in the hands of Sudio, whose return to the netlabel scene some time ago has been welcomed with open arms. “Sheets of Sound” is already his third offering on Ideology and it is easy to see why the label should get all worked up about it: Like few others, this producer is capable of maintaining a minimal approach, while coupling it with a feel of great musicality and of keeping tracks burning for what seems like an eternity on nothing but some knob twisting and a constant cog-wheel-like interlocking of interconnected themes.

The idea of house and techno of exploring a single idea until one reaches a solid core of white light becomes all-apparent in eight-minute soulbearing sessions such as “Electrospray”: funky, spacey and fit for the future like the Captain Future-soundtrack, it condenses matter into energy like a dancing black hole sucking in mass to the groove of a James Brown record. Sudio does not build his pieces in the Music Instructor.fashion of beginning with next to nothing and introducing more and more elements until the track has reached its full potential. Rather, his compositions glisten like ascending quicksilver inside a cosmic thermometer, occasionally gushing up like dreamy outbursts of ectoplasma inside a feverish galaxy in a tantric trance.

It is an approach which leads to results both organic and seductively superficial – and to a universe filled with the most diverse emmissions. “Sheets of Sound” uses the full potential at the hands of a contemporary producer, doesn’t eschew melody and harmony and plays with timbre and samples in a smart and surprising way: No bass- and snare.drum sounds the same on any of these pieces and the delirious “Barbeque Slam” seemlessly leads into the nocturnal neologisms of “Fundamental Oscillation”. The “Lagavulin Remix” of “This is Awareness”, meanwhile, is a bouncy minimal monster, pushing for- and backwards like the racing heart of a pubescent boy on his first date.

Not a dull moment in sight and in the curved hallways of this extensive aural mindtrip, one looses touch with all physical sensations. There is a vibe of immense positivity running through “Sheets of Sound”, a feeling that the world is essentially simple in its basic foundations. That may be the Zen-message the label was talking about in the introduction: When the body looses necessity and the mind stops worrying, an eternal truth is revealed. Sudio’s music has the potential to take you there.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Ideology