ML Buch - Suntub extras ML Buch

Hard to overstate how influential ML Buch has become in the short 4 or 5 years since she’s been active in the pop underworld. The flange/chorus FX and digital manipulation she’s made a staple has really bled out into other people’s guitar work and her kind of gliding vocal style is almost iconic at this point, right? On Suntub Extras, Buch expands the perimeter of the world she created with her 2023 album with gorgeous instrumentals. 

Honestly it’s kind of a revelation? Her affecting, uncanny knack of describing what it’s like to live in that decaying, digital bridge between IRL and AFK is mostly stripped away for some really scintillating, gorgeous guitar work. Opener feels completely deep fried and adds a kind of Earth-esque mega distortion to her playing, while other points on this disc remind me of Stuart Adamson’s instrumentals for the Restless Natives soundtrack. Which is maybe the best unreleased soundtrack of the 80s? Some of the tracks might chime with you if you’re familiar with Suntub while if you’re a fan of that twinkling waterfall of notes style that Vini Reilly really invented, you should be liberally all over this. She’s done it again.