Another reason to take a look at the history of club music outside its dominant centres. In Rome, for example, Joe Casagrande, Matthew Mountford and Roberto Lycke founded the Surya project in 1995. Their first album, »Wide Tuning«, was released in 1997. It was actually more of a long EP, produced by themselves and, as was the trend at the time, only released on CD. Four of the five tracks are now being released on vinyl for the first time. With their mix of tribal grooves, dub, breakbeats and trance, their rediscovery comes at just the right time. To expect completely new revelations would be a bit of an exaggeration. Their track »A Good Trip to East Putney«, for example, seems to have been inspired by old IDM heroes, with the first few minutes sounding remarkably like Autechre’s »The Egg«. And the closing track on this reissue, »Rendez Vous at G Point«, is reminiscent of the breakbeat-happy dub-house days of bands like Zion Train. Which is only partly meant as a criticism, since these were some of the styles being cultivated at the time to which no one could claim exclusive copyright. Surya do their job so well that you hear a unique voice from the nineties that blends perfectly with today’s hypnotic mood on the first track, »Raon«.
Wide Tuning
