I first entered the American heartland in the dead of December, after a lifetime of experiencing only the slightest dip in temperature and waning of humidity in Mumbai’s dense, coastal air. Cold was never a defined feeling. For me, it was always more an association with sitcom re-runs, where nameless faces would take off thick coats and enter the warm glow of cafes, shaking off the snow. We’d watch Christmas specials, re-visit old photographs from the 90s, where I’d stare, confused, at blurred imagery of my parents, denim and raincoat-clad figures in the snow, outside a nameless engineering department building. I’d grown to understand winter as only a diasporic cultural artifact from the years before my birth. What is it? This was a larger-than-life question growing up. I’m still unfurling. Thanks to “Light Snowfall”, I have the perfect teaching guide; an educational audio experience of sorts. I’m learning as much from it as I am from the devastating and seemingly endless vistas of my homes both new and old. Encased in its delicate, alabaster haze, I return to a more nascent time in my life.
Norihito Suda’s elegant new release stands in stark contrast to his last – that sun-kissed apothecary of sonic treasures that came out on dauw in September. “Light Snowfall”, out on Facture/Fluid Audio, never demands your attention – rather, by floating in and out of your consciousness, it’s sort of been there, by your side, all along. It’s singular. Distant organs ring celestial, but your feet are firmly planted in the earth, where scattered field sounds share obscured stories with you. Time is reduced to a shell of its former being, where every moment feels resolutely infinite. But that’s where you want to be for now, because in Suda’s universe, it really, actually, genuinely might be about the journey and not the destination.