ML Buch, Suntub
15 Love
There’s certainly an experimental aspect to Marie Louise Buch’s work; this is an artist that swallowed a pill containing a tiny video camera to film her insides for the music video accompanying her debut album Skinned as a means of exploring themes of intimacy in the digital age and a “very literal way of internalising technology”.
High-concept hijinks aside, Buch is a gifted songwriter and producer that uses unconventional methods to arrive at something instantly accessible. Where Skinned leaned more into electronic textures and overt effects processing, her latest album, Suntub, digs further into Buch’s fascination with the guitar, filtering the familiar sounds of ’80s and ’90s alt-rock through a surreal lens.
Not only a bedroom producer, Buch prefers recording in unusual locations, often using her car as a studio space. Vocals were recorded out in the field, sat by the ocean in the back of her Peugeot, and guitars were recorded in “various waterfront storage spaces”, reamped in a swimming pool, sauna, and even run through the car’s stereo. “It creates a more intimate space for the vocals to be immersed in,” she said in an interview. “Perhaps you can’t hear it, but you can feel that it’s recorded a little differently.”
Buch has said that she worked with open tunings on a 7-string Fender Stratocaster and also made use of virtual guitar plugins and guitar apps on her iPad. Where software instruments like this can often be looked at as inadequate imitations of the real thing, fit to be used in a pinch, here they are turned to her advantage. Much like artists like Mica Levi and Oneohtrix Point Never, Buch uses their uncanny valley-like tones to colour her warm, tender songs with an otherworldly tinge. Matt Mullen
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