by Eric Hill @surgeryradio
Starting this column on a week that ends with the yearly Record Store Day madness was poor planning on my part. And maybe the easy thing would be to just pick RSD as this week’s recommendation. But why do the easy thing.
No, instead, let’s turn our gaze to a release that precedes the special edition / reissue miasma that is April 18th. Suuns & Jerusalem in My Heart – S/T comes out this week on Secret City Records (Secretly Canadian in the rest of the world). It is the result of a project that started nearly three years ago as the members of these two Montreal bands booked time to record some ideas and experiments just to see what might happen.
Suuns are a four piece that bring the prickly art of post-punk alongside a proto-electro keyboard swirl, giving them a vibe that shoots in two (or more) historical directions. Jerusalem in My Heart is harder to define. Primarily a live experience, Radwan Moumneh, also a respected producer and sound engineer in Montreal’s Hotel 2 Tango scene, has directed the project with help from a variety of collaborators over the last decade. Sonically JIMH combines a deep appreciation and knowledge of Arabic folk, modal, and poetry traditions with an eye to the future via keyboard drones and electronic experiments.
The results of their 2012 recording sessions, later smoothed and tweaked, suggest broadcasts from some Middle Eastern outpost where mashups of Joy Division, Killing Joke, Brian Eno, Fairuz, and ambient Aphex Twin are the daily bread. It’s music with a strong pulse that also whispers its truths close to your ear, like an intimate conversation at the back of a dance club.
Suuns discography
Zeroes, QC (Secretly Canadian, 2010)
Images du Futur (Secretly Canadian, 2013)
Jerusalem in My Heart discography
Mo7it Al-Mo7it (Constellation, 2013)
The project will be touring Canada late spring / early summer with a premiere at this years Festival Internationale de Music Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) in Victoriaville, Quebec this May.
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