Suso Saiz - Just Before Silence (2022)

Spanish ambient / minimalist pioneer Suso Sáiz unites with contemporary experimental electronic duo Menhir for profoundly beautiful one-off collaboration album Just Before Silence.

Longtime fans of each other’s work, Sáiz and multidisciplinary artistic collective Menhir (Madrid’s Iván Cebrián and Coco Moya) share a love of subtle, nuanced textures and understated expressionism. Appropriately, the fruits of this collaboration sound not like an additive process, but a stretching and pulling of boundaries to create something new and unique.

The project began as an improvised session in the recording studio, the first time the trio had played together. They agreed to perform without discussing the material, to be guided instinctively and intuitively through their cosmos as if in collective meditation. Conversational evaluation of the music was allowed only after the recording light was switched off. Coco Moya notes a realisation that dawned on the group during the process: “a tendency to silence. A way to approach sound making. A way to approach a sound encounter without words or concepts, just by letting the musical perceptions and emotions coexist and connect.” This tendency informs not only the title of the record, but also the music within. Silence, space, and ma are all defining themes, as are spare motes of sound that float on rays of dulcet luminescence.