The Squid's Ear Magazine


Krausbauer, John / Kaori Suzuki: Suspension Blues (ANTS Records)

John Krausbauer and Kaori Suzuki create an immersive sonic and visual experience that merges high-frequency drones, shimmering glissandi, and multi-tracked custom synthesizers with real-time processing, inducing a state of deep listening and sensory saturation through harmonic resonance, auditory distortion, and psychotropic strobing color fields.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



John Krausbauer-composer, performer

Kaori Suzuki-composer, performer


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Label: ANTS Records
Catalog ID: AG28
Squidco Product Code: 35818

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2025
Country: Italy
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels
Recorded in Oakland, California, in May, 2020.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Suspension Blues (2020) is a collaborative audio-visual work conceived as an immersive, droning strobosphere. It is a model for an activated environment with an amalgam of pulsating light and color, high-frequency drones, and shimmering glissandi. The aural and visual elements function in direct and intentional relation with one another and by the selfsame perceptual mechanism. A total sensory field saturation instigates retinal and cochlear hyperactivation; long durational attendance is rewarded by trance- induction into deeper folds of space-time. Harmonic drones are utilized as sonic activators and guide the ears in an act of "deep listening" (albeit an act more shock-awakening than meditational), whilst the psychotropic strobing color fields are employed as the nearest optical equivalent to the drone. The two in tandem establish a deeply immersive union. The visual element involves a strobed-phasing of a five-hued blue (color) variation pattern on a split screen. The corresponding audio is a multi-tracked custom-synth patch with real-time software processing."-ANTS Records


Artist Biographies

John Krausbauer is a West Coast-based composer and multi-instrumentalist, known for the bands Tecumseh and Trees, and his association with Bill Holloway. He has released albums on the lables Fabrica Records, Ants, and Debacle Records.

-Squidco 3/5/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Kaori Suzuki is a California-based artist, performer, and composer. Born in Japan in the early 80s and relocated to the United States as a child, she moved to Olympia, WA in 2004, and has been a west coast resident since.

Suzuki's spiraling sound visions are geared for heightened states of listening-and-being, often working with loud, high-droning electric and acoustic instruments, synthesis, tape, oscillators, and other elements necessary to spin her auditory transmissions. Her long time interests in third-ear tone psychedelia and acoustic phenomena inform her live performances, recordings, and installation works. Her recent projects explore the rudimentary use of auditory distortion products, combining very-high-frequencies, long durations, and alternate tunings.

When she is not working on her solo works, her other projects include drumming in the San Franciscan minimalist psych-punk group, Night Collectors; her ongoing, collaborative light & sound happenings with partner, John Krausbauer; and playing cello and electric guitar in the ever-intense amplified string ensemble, Ecstatic Music Band.

Suzuki's background in electronic music and instrument making is diverse, including her autodidactic productions of electronic instruments for her (now defunct) project, Magic Echo Music, from 2008-2013. Her custom and small run instruments have been utilized by musicians around the globe and most venerably by Hiroshi Hasegawa (C.C.C.C., Astro). Suzuki has taught at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College and is a lecturer on the cultural and material history of sound reproduction and its effects on global musical practice at Santa Clara University."

-Kaori Suzuki Website (https://kaorisuzuki.net/About)
3/5/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Suspension Blues 49:03

Related Categories of Interest:


Electro-Acoustic
Compositional Forms
Sound, Noise, &c.
Ambient, Minimal, Reductionist, Onky Sound, &c.
Installation Sound Work
Duo Recordings
New in Compositional Music
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