Superstorms, a new solo project by ex-Tusco Terror/sometimes Trouble Books member Michael Tolan, is born out of creative impulses that are simultaneously subversive of and sensitively attuned to their musical lineage(s). Frustrated and bored with the tropes of contemporary ambient music, Tolan began experimenting with harsh digital samples and clipping source material, finding himself liberated at the prospect of productively using sounds which previously would have been left to lie dormant on the cutting room floor. He began working with a palette comprised of in-the-red, bit-crushed digitalia, setting to work kneading these stubborn blocks of harsh sound into a sequence of five pieces which, despite their considerable barbs, retain the fluidity and pathos of the ambient tradition from which they were inspired. Tolan’s Tusco Terror/harsh noise connections rear their head in the form of both the intensely prickly and pointillistic aspects of each composition and by way of the informal, spontaneous, almost punk sensibilities which they each possess. Indeed, Superstorms is at once organic and robotic, forceful and calm, coherent and unpredictable. In short, it is a meshing of oppositions- binaries smashed together and expertly sculpted into truly powerful sonic miasma.
