Shudo: Shudo

shu-s.jpg (16k) Shudo: Shudo
(Quatermass - 2001)

I could feel my brain begin to spin with my first earful of the sounds of Shudo... and of course that's a good thing! The young Barcelonan non-musician's self-titled album features a mesmerizing balance between subtle electronic nuances and digitally deconstructed mayhem...

What Makes Me Happy? How about an intriguing opening track, like, when whispy voices wail beneath downtempo beats and scritchy syncopated clatter, which becomes more discombobulated as the piece (un)develops? In The Heart of The Air You Can Hear (0:58), random-ish piano and guitar notes intermingle with unintelligible voices. The lazily wafting haze of Thrdos is revved up by fluttery percussion and vaporized basslines.

A fragmented-yet-cohesive arrangement of guitar strums, percussion and general electronic noise comes together in the form of Domi, topped with odd squawks and increasingly dense distortions. A steadily-rockin' solo drum eventually gets the slice-and-dice treatment; Bringing Together The Best then is engulfed by a dizzying droneswarm. With the faint vocal hums of Days Without Trace, a brief melancholy slur ensues.

Groovy '60s-style choral-and-brass samples appear, albeit in a mutated form, as Saca sways to mid-tempo beats. The sonically warped samples of Bruce Nauman are pounded into submission by vigorous-then-explosive drumming. A final cooldown... though dappled with light touches of chaos, After Dega (7:26) presents a lovely, relaxed ending.

Also, the CD contains a motion-oriented video accompanied by an additional Shudo track...

A little rough sometimes, yet strangely appealing... I really enjoyed the almost-abstract mix of noise and skewed musicality which allow the rhythms to remain accessible. Shudo's 11 pieces add up to 50 minutes of 8.8 ear-explorations... I hope to hear more.

Search for Shudo at Dutch-East for behind-the-scenes info about the artist.

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This review posted June 30, 2001

AmbiEntrance © 2001-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).