Susurrus Station – “Antinomie” – [AIO Soundings]

Max Level   5/24/2016   12-inch, A Library

A fantastically odd record. Hard to describe. Amazingly creative. Sara and Jason, a duo from Oregon or maybe Washington, certainly have some strange ideas about how to put music together. Things that really shouldn’t work together somehow do.

They both sing, so we get male and female vocals along with guitar, violin, mandolin, percussion, keyboards. Drum machine. Unidentifiable sounds. A handful of guests add various instruments–woodwinds, viola, synths and samples, percussion. It takes a few listens to hear everything that’s going on and even then you won’t. Every track is deep and interesting.

The first track is low and slow and swampy. In fact the whole record sounds like it emerged from a swamp somewhere and wants to crawl into your brain. Which it does. If I were wearing a mood ring it would be green-blue. Or maybe blue-violet. I forget which of those means tripped out and happy but that’s the color it would be. Maybe a bit of orange for confusion and wariness.

This review sucks, I know. Why did I mention swamps and mood rings? The record is really strange and great; I should have just left it at that.