Audiopile Review: Any genre you may think is uniquely anglophonic will eventually reveal an international cohort of practitioners. But it takes time. We’re only just starting to see ambient music’s global reach. And as we do, it’s feels like this uniquely amorphous style was designed to shape itself to the sensibilities of its host culture. Or maybe, MFs tend to project their fantasies about national cultures onto ambient music. Either way, it’s hard to deny that Italian ambient veteran Gigi Masin captures the sun-baked warmth and brooding passions we associate with his native country. Spain’s Suso Sáiz has a similarly Latin-Mediterranean vibe. It’s no surprise that both artists have released albums on the Music from Memory label, the true home of neo-Balearic chill vibes. Sáiz has been consistently releasing music since 1984, and ‘Distorted Clamour’ is his eighth release for Music from Memory. It has all the sun-baked warmth and brooding passions you could hope for and will take you a million miles from rainy Vancouver (although, technically, we make it about 8,000km). Turns out, all this sultry beauty was created without the use of synthesizers. Instead, Sáiz sampled a range of clicking, clanging acoustic sounds (hence the album title) and transformed them into radiant drones and sensual textures. This act of electro-acoustic alchemy transforms the panic and clutter of contemporary life into something transcendent and hopeful. Fans of Fennesz (who appeared on 2019’s ‘Nothing is Objective’) will adore this.

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We are proud to announce ‘Distorted Clamor’, the latest full-length album from legendary Spanish ambient composer Suso Saiz. Marking his eighth release with our label, the album showcases Saiz at his spellbinding best, continuing a prolific creative phase in a career that spans over 40 years.

Building upon ‘Resonant Bodies’ and ‘Nothing Is Objective’, his most recent full length releases for Music From Memory, Saiz’s dedication to experimentation and conceptual approach to sound lie at the centre of ‘Distorted Clamor’.

Discussing his process and the concept behind the album, Saiz says: “Thousands of beings cry out for their lives, for the sustainability of their habitats, for their future. Their clamouring together generates a distorted, deafening and incomprehensible noise. Trying to go deeper into that distortion and understand all the voices and discover the strength and beauty in all of them. This was the first image I had when I started composing Distorted Clamor. Can distortion and all those sounds (clicks, clips, ticks, tocs, pluks, crashes) that we normally discard, generate beauty? This question has also accompanied the entire whole project.”

The transit of sound through various materials is also central to the work, with Saiz using water, wood, and metals as filters and sound-transforming pedals. The album was created without the use of synthesizers, relying entirely on acoustic sounds that were transformed in an unnatural way to achieve something completely new.

Spanning eleven compositions, Saiz’s mastery of timbre and ability to paint layers of sound with the subtlest of touches stand out unmistakably to the listener. As always, his radiant drones are a nest of hidden feelings; they glisten with complex emotions and textures, teasing out moods of vulnerability and hope.