ON THE CD
A guide to this month’s special compilation
1. SUSS
Drift
Our roadtrip through the cosmic pastoral landscape begins with this nocturnal tune from the New York band SUSS, who evoke an empty desert on “Drift”, from last year’s album Promise. Pat Irwin’s soaring guitar parts mingle with what sounds like cicadas in the brush.
2. STEVE GUNN
Way Out We ather
Steve Gunn may be better known for his folk- and rockoriented albums than for his forays into ambient music, but the title track to his 2014 album is all vibe, with smears of pedal-steel morphing into a crisply picked guitar theme.
3. WILLIAM TYLER
Four Corners
William Tyler’s 2020 EP “New Vanitas” gravitates toward the spacey, especially on its fourth track ,“Four Corners”. Inspired by the spot in the southwestern United States where the borders of four states, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, come together, it uses a gently burbling beat to anchor a freefloating guitar riff to Earth.