SUSS
Birds & Beasts NORTHERN SPY 8/10
Veteran instrumentalists traverse dusky, barren landscapes on a definitive fifth album.
By Wyndham Wallace
Mirage men: (l–r)Jonathan Gregg, Pat Irwin and Bob Holmes of SUSS
WHEN Uncut launched an ‘Ambient Americana’ edition of our long-running Sounds Of The New West CD series three years ago, it was natural that SUSS should provide the opening track.
Qualities shared with the panoply of like-minded practitioners on the disc include a preference for somnolent, meditative tempos verging on the New Age, and spectral yet luxurious washes of pedal steel. “Drift” was not only suitably titled as an indication of the New Yorkers’ aesthetic, but stood – or more likely reclined – as a perfect introduction to a widescreen instrumental style whose star was very much in the ascendant.
While not necessarily a self-defined scene, ‘Ambient Americana’ felt like a natural, starlit canopy beneath which the likes of William Tyler, Andrew Tuttle (a recent SUSS collaborator), Steve Gunn, Luke Schneider and Mary Lattimore might quietly rest. Yet the genre was far from a new conceit. Indeed, its most obvious roots lie in Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks, released in 1983. Daniel Lanois’ voluminous production may have been intended to evoke endless space, but it works just as well looking towards the earth’s horizons as down upon them.