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Montreal-based experimental rock trio
Suuns blend aspects of dark electro, dissonant art rock, and plodding indie rock in a constantly shifting sound. The band toured extensively, and their foggy, amorphous style of song construction grew more sophisticated over the course of albums like 2016's
Hold/Still and 2021's
The Witness.
Suuns formed in 2007 when friends
Ben Shemie and
Joe Yarmush were playing around with musical ideas that bloomed into full-on songs. The two guitarists enlisted bassist
Max Henry and drummer
Liam O'Neill for the first iteration of
Suuns, originally working under the name Zeroes. The band started out with a minimal and sometimes-paranoid take on indie rock and released a two-song 7" in 2008. They recorded a full-length with
the Besnard Lakes'
Jace Lasek at Breakglass Studios in their home city of Montreal. Upon
Lasek's recommendation, the ten-song
Zeroes QC caught the attention of Secretly Canadian, and
Suuns signed to the label in the autumn of 2010. That October, the album was released just as the group started touring with
the Besnard Lakes and
Land of Talk.
Sophomore effort
Images du Futur arrived three years later, further exploring the dark sounds of
Suuns' debut. The album was included on the long list for the 2013 Polaris Music Prize. It was 2015 when Secretly Canadian released a collaborative record that
Suuns and friend
Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of
Jerusalem in My Heart had been working on in 2012. The long-labored album took years to complete and found the band's minimal electronic approach embracing
Moumneh's Arabic influences and complementary synthesizer sensibilities.
Suuns then recorded their third proper album with producer
John Congleton at his Dallas studio. Incorporating more electronics into the group's sound,
Hold/Still appeared on Secretly Canadian in April 2016. The following year, they returned to the studio alongside
Congleton, doubling down on the electronic elements for 2018's
Felt. At that point,
Henry left the group as an official member, but he continued working with
Suuns in the studio.
The band worked in a similar territory on their moody and sometimes ambient-toned 2021 album
The Witness. The set was recorded by the group at home over the course of 2020, with
Congleton again aiding by mixing the record.
The Witness would be
Suuns' first album for the Joyful Noise label, and was released in September 2021. ~ Jason Lymangrover