Susbarbatus was released on 31 October 2009 at Hampshire Jam 8 where John was performing as part of AirSculpture.
Susbarbatus is John's first solo album, or second if you count the home-made CDR "Bohunt Sabotage".
The original intention was to follow up Bohunt quickly with an album based around cleaned up versions of that material. This didn't quite go to plan! Three years later, half the tracks on Susbarbatus are related to this material but in significantly polished form. The remainder is brand new music.
Stylistically the album inevitably has some similarity to John's work with AirSculpture. The backbone of the album is a set of sequencer driven tracks, mixing moody atmospherics with expressive melodic lines. It is much more structured, though, with more in the way of well defined melodies.
It should appeal to the established AirSculpture fans and maybe to others who find the AS style too free form.
Two tracks diverge from this pattern: "Brane Storm" is deep-space ambient, and "Antiquark" is a gentle sequencer track that perhaps invokes Steve Reich rather than the Berlin school.
