A little more electronic sounding SUUNS is not a bad thing. Read the press release below and check out the video for the tune…or check out one of the links if that’s your thing.
Montreal band SUUNS – Ben Shemie, Joe Yarmush, and Liam O’Neill – present a new single/video, “C-Thru,” from their forthcoming album, The Witness, out September 3rd on Joyful Noise.
Following the bright and fuzzy lead single “Witness Protection,” “C-Thru” surges with murky vocals and reverberating synth. Staccato beats and blips of warping instruments flit throughout. It was one of the last songs recorded for the album, and came together quickly without much reflection. “A lot of the slower and more delicate songs on this record required quite some finesse, and after all that careful work we needed a good romp,” says O’Neill. “SUUNS at our best is always secretly a little bit ‘fun,’ so when Ben writes an uncomplicated song with a good melody, we try not to overthink it – we try and get the sound of us having fun with it on tape.”
The accompanying video, created by Jared Raab and Luca Tarantini (AOK), is an autostereogram made to be viewed in one of two ways, using either the “crossed-eye” (convergence) method or “parallel-eye” (divergence) method. One must simply “decouple” or defocus their eyes, tricking the brain into seeing the slight variations in the repeating pattern as depth information. “‘C-Thru’ was a song that seemed to ask for an abstract and difficult image. Perhaps we were feeling exhausted from having to see everything on a screen, but the experience of making the video was a lot like viewing it. We were slowly burying ourselves under a layer after layer of static textures. We live in a world mediated more and more by screens and we started to see the song as representing something more meaningful, out of sight, under the surface. It’s quite literally a trick of the eyes. It’s an image underneath another image.” explain Raab & Tarantini.
Listen via other streaming services here:
The Witness marks a shrewdly offbeat left turn, and shows SUUNS in their most comfortable, candid state. Self-recorded and self-produced over the majority of 2020, a year of strife, solitude and reflection, The Witness finds the band holding a magnifying glass over their own default state of playing and performing. It’s a swift departure from previous album Felt, and exults in harvesting haphazard ideas in their embryonic, demoed versions, as if letting loose a glorious fireworks display into the heavens.
With the departure of Max Henry as a full time member in 2018 and Shemie now living an ocean apart in Paris, a fresh challenge manifested for the trio to find each other again, both socially and creatively. More than any other SUUNS record, The Witness employs a jazz mentality of designing a continuous vibe over the notion of separate chapters. There’s a level of relaxation, of accepting the band’s primal instincts, and a concentrated attempt to maximize and revise said instincts. For a band known for its cryptic magnetism, The Witness marks SUUNS’ most generous, stripped-down and affecting work to date. Pre-order The Witnesshere.
See SUUNS live:
22.9.2021 L’Imperial, Quebec City (QC)
23.9.2021 Café du Clocher, Alma (QC)
24.9.2021 Le Petite Boite Noire, Sherbrooke (QC)
29.9.2021Le Zaricot, Saint-Hyacinthe (QC)
1.10.2021 Club Saw, Ottawa (ON)
2.10.2021 Lee’s Palace, Toronto (ON)
23.10.2021 Doornroosje, Nijmegen (NL)
24.10.2021 Oslo, London (UK)
25.10.2021 Oslo, London (UK)
26.10.2021 Classic Grand, Glasgow (UK)
27.10.2021 White Hotel, Manchester (UK)
28.10.2021 Orangerie, Brussels (B)
29.10.2021 Rote Fabrik, Zurich (CH)
31.10.2021 Paradiso Noord, Amsterdam (NL)
01.11.2021 Köln, Bumann & Sohn (GER)
02.11.2021 Lido, Berlin (GER)
04.11.2021 Alice Copenhagen (DK)
06.11.2021 Hafenklang, Hamburg (GER)
07.11.2021 Schorndorf, Manufaktur (GER)
08.11.2021 Maroquinerie, Paris (FR)
All show tickets available here:
The Witness track list:
1. Third Stream
2. Witness Protection (video)
3. C-Thru
4. Timebender
5. Clarity
6. The Fix
7. Go To My Head
8. The Trilogy
