Suso Saiz
From Unearthing The Music
Suso Saiz is a Spanish composer, guitar player, producer, born in Cádiz in 1957. He was a pioneer of New Age music in Spain. In 1980 he founded La Orquesta de las Nubes.
Contents
Biography
A precocious musician, Suso Saiz began his career in the 1970s at the Real Conservatorio in Madrid, where he first studied guitar and then composition. He was a part of a few short-lived folk groups and had some contact with the local jazz scene, but it was above all his meeting with a teacher, the influential electroacoustic musician Luis de Pablo, which would open up new perspectives for him. Luis De Pablo introduced his student to the American minimalist current, led by composers such as Terry Riley, Steve Reich or Philipp Glass, and certain types of non-Western music, two sound territories which would mark him for a long time, being fascinated by the timbral approaches and the hypnotic repetitions of the music.
Although he recorded his guitar works very early on, his first official recordings were the albums of the avant-garde group Orquesta de las nubes (The Cloud Orchestra), which he founded in 1980 with the soprano Maria Villa and the percussionist Pedro Estevan. Between jazz, contemporary, ethnic and repetitive music, the group produced unclassifiable, free and joyful music, which can be linked to the “new age” current (Laraaji, Ariel Kalma).
During the second half of the decade, Suso Saiz alternated between solo albums and collaborations. In his work alone, the musician clearly seeks to explore more commercial sounds, striving to create produced and sophisticated instrumental music, a sort of 80's pop without vocals or words, in which the influence of Laurie Anderson can sometimes be perceived. These records occasionally offer interesting ambient swerves through more contemplative and refined tracks, where the guitar reigns supreme, which anticipate by ten years certain post-rock sounds in their most melancholy side (Jim O'Rourke, Loren Connors, Lee Ranaldo). Among his collaborators of the time were artistic personalities as varied as Luis de Pablo, Jorge Reyes, Steve Roach, Justo Bagüeste, Suzanne Kraft, Salif Keita, Fennesz, Francisco López and Glen Velez.
In the 90s, he began to work as producer and arranger for many Spanish groups, including pop-rock outfits like Esclarecidos, Duncan Dhu, Celtas Cortos and indie-rock bands like Los Planetas and Los Piratas. It was also during this decade that he began more seriously exploring composition for film.
Along with these various public activities, Suso Saiz has been developing, since the beginning of the decade, an experimental work in his home studio based on guitar loops, synthesizers and electronic percussion. He describes the genesis of this work, which he calls “hypnotics”, as such:
"This material comes from two needs. The first was to fall asleep because of my insomnia problems, which gave the recording automatisms and spontaneity. The second was undoubtedly the need for me to find new paths. Conceived at dawn, with references to particular myths like “2001: The Odyssey of Space” by Stanley Kubrick, these recordings helped me wake up each morning with a clearer mind." (Interview with Antton Iturbe, for TIU Mag, 2016).
Embellished with effects, the guitar loops turn into vast soundscapes, lasting up to an hour. Despite some confidential discographic appearances, this work would only be revealed with the release, in 2008, of the box set "The Box Of The Insomniac Songs", which has since become a milestone in Spanish ambient.
Since the 2000s, Suso Saiz's work became increasingly artisanal, free and radical, tending to disconnect him from the music industry. Besides his homemade “hipnóticos”, his official activities then boiled down to a few collaborations, with a handful of musicians, mostly from groups he had produced in the 90s.
Discography
Orquesta de las Nubes
- Me paro cuando suena. Linterna Música. 1983.
- El orden del azar. Linterna Música. 1985.
- Manual del usuario. GASA. 1987.
- The Order of Change. Compilation. Music for Memory. 2018.
Música Esporádica
- Música Esporádica. GASA. 1985.
Solo albums
- Prefiero el naranja. Linterna Música. 1984.
- En la piel del cruce. GASA. 1986.
- Confidencias. 3 cassettes. GASA. 1987.
- Hypnotics. Slow Food. 1992.
- Mirrors of Pollution. No-Cd Rekords. 1994.
- Quartet. DRO. 1998.
- The Box of Insomniac Songs. 8-CD box set, self-published in 2008. Re-released by Geometrik Records in 2017.
- Rainworks. Music for Memory. 2017.
- Nothing is Objective. Music for Memory. 2019.
Collaborations
- With Jorge Reyes. Crónica de castas. NO-CD Rekords. 1990.
- With Fon Román. Plurals and Impronta. Astro Discos. 2005 and 2007.
- With Justo Bagüeste. Inducing the Pleasure Dreams V2. Geometrik. 2019.
- With Suzanne Kraft. Between No Things. Music for Memory. 2020.
- With Francisco López. Conscious Polarize. Two-Headed Snake. 2021.
Soundtracks
- Katuwira. NO-CD Rekords. 1998
References