Artists/composers with an extensive background in modern classical music have been experimenting with the so-called modern musical forms like electronic/ambient music for a while now, and quite a few of them have not only blurred the musical boundaries but have moved them further into unknown realms.
Canadian composer Anthony Tan is certainly among those, bringing in, and combining abstract elements from both modern classical music as well as ambient music, both acoustic and electronic, often combining the two, as his latest mini-album Susurrus amply shows.
While he has established himself through collaborations with a series of like-minded artists, such as Rei Nakamura (Germany), Scapegoat (Canada/ France), Thin Edge New Music Collective (Canada), Maruta Staravoitava (Germany), and quite a few others, his latest solo project, Susurrus, shows that Tan can work quite well by himself.
On the two elongated tracks here, Tan works with a combination of an acoustic piano and real-time electronics, more interested in sound combination that creates a spectrum of, shall we say, grey, the audible space between ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sounds.
Many similar efforts can fail if they don’t create an effective balance between light and dark, but, Tan manages to create such a balance, keeping the listener in enjoyable suspension.
