Ground - Sunizm (2018)

Ground is an Osaka native, but his soul is truly that of a nomad, traversing the planet, befriending the kindred spirits found in humans, animals and plants. He is exceptionally receptive to the beauty in all that surrounds him—the incidental music of a busy city street, the orchestrated chaos of a scrambling radio, the syncopated grace of a migrating flock of birds, the simplicity of an isolated hand clap—and as his map continuously unfolds, he accumulates a vast catalogue of visceral tools to complex musically recount his experiences. Sunizm is a cross section of the artist's process—an array of complex microcosms overlapping to comprise a thematic whole—gathering field recordings, found instrumentation, jagged electronics, and synthesized chanting, to be woven into a dense narrative that appears both obsessively constructed and divinely improvised. With each consecutive track, the artist gradually constructs hypnotic patterns that 1-up the mind as it struggles to break free from a seduction of loops, steadily intensifying until reaching an apex of sound collage so cerebral that the listener might consider a post-album shower. But alas, the fourth quarter releases a bit of pressure, our gobs still lay smacked but there is a warm confidence as the psychedelic trial delivers us home to nod out. Dear humans, animals and plants, Ground and the ESP Institute present, Sunizm.