Suntub’s careful balance between songs and instrumentals kept it from fading into the background; it was often striking to hear Buch’s voice and realize we hadn’t heard it in a while. It’s not clear whether these tracks are sketches meant to become full songs later or complete recordings excised during sequencing, but had they been included on Suntub in their present form, they might have tilted the album a mote too far in the direction of mood music. “Opener,” a two-minute guitar solo, certainly would’ve been a far less effective intro than “Pan over the hill” and its scene-setting synth wingbeats. “Halfdark, Slow blinking” is OK if what you want to hear from one of the decade’s most distinctive guitarists is a Robin Guthrie impression.
The two recordings that stand most easily alongside the original material on Suntub are the two that feature percussion. Cymbals and tom splashes turn “Suncrumb trail, Staging” into a snowglobe. The only one with drums throughout is “Moving light, Change,” the longest and best of the six tracks, whose slow and almost imperceptible build brings to mind ambient techno and whose wind-tunnel percussion echoes the eerie puffs of air on Suntub’s “High Speed Calm Air Tonight.”
We don’t learn much about Buch’s music from these songs, and only the track names give any insight into her process. Separated by commas, as if to imply multiple tentative titles, they suggest Buch playing around with different words in developing Suntub’s astounding vocabulary of natural and anatomical imagery. The reason to listen to these extras is simply to listen to them, and they work both as an ersatz EP, on their own, and a tidy little anticlimax to the Bandcamp download. It’s no substitute for the real thing, but it’s great if you want to get close to where Suntub takes you without listening to Suntub itself. I’ll cherish it on my 15-minute walks.
