Montreal’s Suuns have always been ones to tamper with the darkness and meddle with minimalism. Previous albums, including 2016’s Hold/Still and 2013’s Images du Futur, helped assert an attack upon systematic music and standard concepts; all via the power of razor wire synth lines, throttling drum machines and frontman Ben Shemie’s muffled, claustrophobic vocal lines. Masters in the unnerving and distressing, the band, along with the likes of Beak> and Fever Ray, possess an ability to blend psychedelia and electronica through digital trickery.

Whereas Hold/Still held format and elements of cohesiveness, Felt struggles to revitalise much of this message, regardless of the instrumental armoury that Shemie and co deploy on their fourth effort. Opener ‘Look No Further’ feels a little weak around the edges, what the Canadians go for and aim for is a slightly off-kilter take on Thom Yorke’s The Eraser, the gloom and haunt lies within, but without any path to follow, it falls slightly upon deaf ears. ‘Watch You, Watch Me’ begins with disarming contortions of fuzz and swooning synths, tailored around the sorts introduced by The Chemical Brothers circa their Further days. However, the track fails to digress from its beginning and it misses its impact due to relentless assailing of percussion and electronics. Without any ceasefire, the band lose track of any dystopian emotion that they were previously so good at injecting into their rhythmic reps.

Much of Felt feels like stabbing in the dark for the group, with ‘After The Fall’ perhaps being the symbol of this darkness – fogs of electronica flood the song with stabs of the drum machine being all that can emerge from within. ‘Control’ falls within a similar void, it tries valiantly to generate an atmosphere but, ultimately, without any fuel in the first half of the album to run off, it feels slightly misplaced and irrelevant – less of a segue between the first and second sections of the album but more an awkward stutter shoehorned into the middle.

The sonic quivering that rattles throughout ‘Baseline’ suggests a little more favour, though, with Shemie’s vocals reaching an audible pitch, melting between the rhythmic shuffles and science-fiction Moog samples. It’s when the band learn to occupy the dead space in their minimalistic afflictions that they find slightly more purpose. ‘X-Alt’ works around deep-house tempos with rumbling guitar dances, accentuated with brass intervals, it helps to find the feet of Felt a little more, suggesting there is a concept at heart.

When the band can tie coherence into their sonic experimentation nerves are hit, feelings are tampered with and ultimately they can find that dystopian groove that their music so perfectly slices within. ‘Peace and Love’ is a bass-heavy hat-tip to the 80s krautrock styles of NEU! with its motorik flickers, ‘Moonbeams’ is a scorning wall of fuzz that feels fitting for its place on the album and the Felt closer, ‘Materials’, is a jarring, stutter of electronic-rock. The stabs of synth evidenced with the latter are gloomy, but covered in that slightly sinister fog that the Montreal-based group were always so good at summoning.

Felt is by no means the strongest effort from the band that have become so good at developing and re-routing their own distinct, genre-bending sound. It struggles to collate and build the same emotion that previous efforts have done, largely because it feels slightly confused and bemused by its own wisdom and experimentation. It never really settles on a direction or message – and what it does look for and seek out, it grasps at and misses, like a hopeless grab at smoke.

Tom Churchill

Website: suuns.net
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