The OBGMs/SUUNS
The OBGMS
The Ends // Black Box Music
It was a dreary November morning, and a chilly drizzle was falling upon the city. Car tires peeled the dampness off the road with an anxious hiss. Exiting a breakfast diner on Queen St. West, Conrad, my brother and I watched the public make haste through the damp day, sucking on toothpicks and burping out our hangovers.
A situation: A 55-ish Bangladeshi man was stepping around the verbal attacks of two royally inebriated fuckups. One of them threw insults at the man, trying to break free from the dissuading grip of his friend.
Their bodies were an interlocked tangle of seasonal appliances- a length of hose knotted to a rake. Their movement was slow as quicksand. Coiled around one another, grabbing at loose ends, they carried on a dance of impotent aggression upon the sidewalk. They could have just as easily been chucked into the shed by a lazy groundskeeper. With a boing and sproing, a tick and rick, hose and rake wound upon one another: Hose writhing, inflated, inflamed and flailing , unwittingly tethered to the spot by the weight of the Rake’s foot on his untied shoelace. As though it were painted on by a child, Hose’s face sat grey in colour with a squiggly upside-down “u” for a frown. ”Babba-lab-sap-badda-lab!” he cussed out from his crooked mouth. "Been-finna-moe-da-doe", his friend said, a more pacifying drawl, using his bulk to absorb the jerky impact of his offended partner.
“What injustice has been done to this bit of hose?” my compatriots and I wondered, “to have made such a sour puss on him?”
As we approached them, I locked eyes with Hose. His took a slow focus on mine, and I observed his spiralling retinas slow to a stop. His slivery eyes widened and I saw in them a kaleidoscope of hood promises: three “hotties”, a new gat, twelve thousand dollars in a suitcase, and a chance to smoke a cigar with DMX. A nascent burst of coordination flared up in young Hose; moving slightly to the right, he lured his partner along, but then quickly accelerated left, and broke free from the expectant grasp of Rake. Rake, faithful Rake, went to grab at his friend but found nothing but his own embrace. Remembering the familiarity of his own touch, he was lulled into himself. He made the sound of a sad Chewbacca. As Hose was barely 5 paces away from his friend, Rake was soundly asleep in his own arms.
Hose’s footsteps made a ful-lap ful-lap ful-lap upon the wet pavement. He started slowly, but his pace picked up, causing his oversized Rocawear hoodie to flutter, his tilted Blue Jays cap to pop, and his pants to wobble on the outermost crest of his hindquarters. He became a vessel for his urban apparel to ride like some devilish co-conspirators. As he accelerated, his limbs extended, and his pants hiked up to expose skinny white ankles that evidently hadn’t been exposed to sunlight in far too long. His footsteps became lighter, a whip-whip-touch, whip-whip-touch of toes upon concrete. He was nearly levitating.
The old man, alerted by the sound behind him, turned to face Hose. He took in several slow breaths before before calmly depositing his groceries onto the ground, and stood in wait.
Hose roared down on the old man, his face in the throes of a possessed conquest. Perhaps he had already achieved Nirvana, was orgasming with the anticipation of a promise long unfulfilled.
In the piercing wail of the charging legionnaire, led by the promise of a devoted martyr, Hose bellowed ”Fuck that, nigga, this is T-dot!" His grey face met the hollow point of the palm of the old man’s perfectly timed slap. The sound as hand met face was as clear and pitch perfect as a cork popping off a celebratory bottle of champagne. “Tech.” A crisp unwavering sound that filled the block with a brief flash of colour, and sent a ripple of pleasure up the base of my spine. Hose’s lower half carried forth its momentum, limbs rotating in their nervy rhythm, as though they were still doing a job that they were determined to accomplish. As he flew through the air, the hiss of the vehicles vanished, and a suspended calm took hold. 3, 4, 5 and finally, at 5 and a half feet, he levelled out parallel with the pavement. He flew silently, drifting through the air, arms folded across his breast. His once cranky face was now peaceful as that of a sleeping baby.
With a plap, and then a flop, and then finally a plop-plop, Hose hit the deck, perfectly and primordially unconscious on the pavement. With a slight bend of the knee, the Bangladeshi man picked up his groceries and continued on his way.
- JD Ormond
SUUNS
FICTION EP // Joyful Noise Recordings
The new SUUNS release, “FICTION,” shudders with magmatic force, oozing across the astral plane in a twenty-minute hallucination unlike anything you have heard this year. Listening to the EP is a joyously masochistic experience akin to watching a bleak yet addictive horror film. The unsettling, white-knuckled dreamscape evoked by these unearthly live-off-the-floor recordings induces an amnesia that is difficult to shake off. In fact, starting over from the beginning seems like the only thing to do. Spectral voices and static interference oscillate in and out of our perception, creating an unworld of lurking guitar noise and relentless forward motion. “FICTION” surges pitilessly ahead as we attempt to take it all in, its inertia almost cruel. But this churning, beautiful realm, amoebic and raw, absorbs us instead.
Each song is a live recording from the past, disassembled and then put back together again, reworked skillfully to bring this inspiring Frankenstein to life in 2020, the year of trying new things (to put it one way). Working within the limitations of the global pandemic, SUUNS decided to forge new metal from bits and pieces they already possessed: unique performances captured live over the last half-decade, as with “PRAY.” Singular moments of power and cohesion that were better off left as is, rather than re-created from the ground up. In this way, “FICTION” is a live recording, the result of a “future/past alchemy.” A time machine.
On “DEATH,” the voice of guest musician Amber Webber chants ominously over a circular saw of fuzz, her words punctuated by a pulsing kick drum. Despite the song’s title and harsh noise, the addition of Webber’s ethereal singing makes it the most beautiful moment on the EP. And there are instances of beauty baked into the punishing substance of this short album, their scarcity only magnifying their effectiveness. Lifelines thrown out to the wayward and the lost.
“FICTION” ends with the voice of Frank Zappa ripping across the decades, his prescient words a battering ram of feverish emotion as they build and build, eventually being joined by the band and culminating in a visceral gut-punch finale. SUUNS dug deep for this one, but not without putting their ears to the ground first. Inspiration came from both within and without. It’s a preview of more to come from the band in the new year, as they continue to tinker with their bold, psychedelic sound.
- Nick Maas
