High Speed Calm Air: ML Buch, Being Late, and Taking Time

Lessons in Patience and Time with 'Suntub'

I often worry that I’m not listening to enough music. Some friends may laugh at this; others may nod knowingly.

I started writing about music in earnest when I was 18—going on 20 years now. Throughout that time, I’ve only put more and more pressure on myself to hear everything I can, and to hear it deeply. If I were reviewing an album, I would need to listen to it a minimum of 10 times (preferably 15 or 20), spread out across headphones, home stereo, car stereo, and laptop speakers. Additionally, I needed to listen to five to ten new albums a day, along with various new singles. If you’re doing the math, these were very unrealistic expectations. On some level, I knew it was impossible. No one told me or asked me to do this. But I wanted to make myself “rise to the occasion.” I loved (and love) music so much that I knew I had to do my best to drink the ocean.

I’ve chilled out… some. Mostly out of physical necessity. I simply don’t have as much time as I did back then, but the desire never went away. Internally, I still feel like I should be “putting up those numbers.” But the issue isn’t just time—it’s attention. Is it better to consume as much as possible, or to really take a few things in? I lean toward the latter but still worry about the great things I’m missing out on.

This especially comes to a head when I think about listening to music in the context of “a year.” Perhaps a byproduct of year-end lists, I try to listen to as many albums from the current year as I can—sometimes even outright ignoring things if they came out a year before and missed my invisible “cutoff.” You can probably see the flaws here. In an effort to listen to more music, I’ve jumped through hoops to deny myself so many great records because of arbitrary standards I imposed on myself.

This is a roundabout way of saying: I was late to the game in discovering Danish artist ML Buch’s incredible 2023 album, Suntub, and I have great remorse for that. But the album itself may have some lessons to offer in this regard.

I found Buch by chance through a post on social media. It was a snarky social post (shocker) admonishing people who say there’s “nothing new to be done with guitar,” adding a “then explain this” alongside a clip of Buch’s song “Slide.”

“Slide” is a wormy, tangled instrumental. It’s just Buch’s guitar, jumping from languid string bends to bright, tense harmonics—fluid and glitchy in its movements. It feels alien, obtuse, and completely beautiful. I quickly went to look for the song on my Streaming Service™… only to find that I’d already saved it with the intention to listen two years ago.

As you might have guessed, I quickly fell in love with the record, lamenting to myself (and anyone who would listen) that I hadn’t heard it sooner. But Suntub itself is an act of patience—the result of resisting arbitrary, timely pressures and opting to emerge only when it was ready.

Suntub took Buch five years to make. In that time, she even released another album, 2020’s electronic-leaning Skinned. She needed space. Though she lives in Copenhagen, she felt a need to get away from the city’s noise and distractions—or at least find different kinds of distractions. She left metropolitan life, opting to work on music and live mostly alone in the small coastal town of Kalundborg. As she tells Loud and Quiet, “I was dealing with feelings like connection and isolation, the need for intensity and euphoria, and shards of light and fire, and connections with something or someone.”

She spent her days noodling on the guitar, finding new sounds, exploring new ideas. Away from a traditional recording studio, she had the freedom to create in an open-ended way. She’d take her car and park by the water, listening to her demos and recordings. She would even record there, in her car. She notes that she’s far from the first person to be inspired by the ocean view. But what’s beautiful about the approach isn’t its originality—it’s its eternalness. The limitless wonder it has incited over generations. Water that crashes and moves, but is never in a hurry to get anywhere in particular. I feel that way when I stare out at the Puget Sound—a connection to the past, present, and future. An indescribable beauty that we can’t help but try to describe and interpret through our art and writing.

Buch would return to Kalundborg over three years. She’d record more in her car. She’d also make field recordings of the wind, turning them into invisible textures on the album—sometimes re-recording the sound as it played through her car stereo or through guitar amps blaring in empty warehouses. She worked on the songs in swimming pools, saunas, storage spaces—wherever inspiration took her.

She tells Loud and Quiet that she sees the album as “a whole world where the individual pieces are tableaus floating in the air of a much bigger thing.” Abstract as that may be, I feel what she means.

Listening to Suntub feels like being caught in a whirlpool of sound. But it’s not chaos. It all falls and floats in place, held by some invisible intentionality. After all, these are still songs—they aren’t just soundscapes (no shade to soundscapes, I do love soundscapes). As much as Buch is prone to sonic wandering, she always brings her far-venturing sound back to center.

Songs like the opener, “Pan over the hill,” take their time to manifest, letting ruses of reverb and distortion float and reform themselves for nearly two minutes before her voice comes in. Her singing, though not on every song, is something of an anchor. It’s a grounding force, always arriving just as it’s needed (if it’s needed).

Even then, her writing is abstract and amorphous. Which is to say: deeply poetic. One of my favorite moments on the record comes with “High speed calm air tonight.” The title alone fills me with such wonder and emotion. There’s the contradiction of high speed and calm, creating immediate tension. It’s so deliciously evocative. The imagery is so powerful with just a few words. I can imagine what she means—that feeling as you speed through the quiet night, like a knife piercing the veil of peace. Paired with her masterful, mysterious guitar work, it’s a powerful and emotive scene.

The intimacy of “Fleshless hand” is palpable but contrasted by… well, all this talk of fleshless hands, exposed nerves, and hollow organs. And yet, what would be more exposed or intimate than being seen without your skin? Maybe that’s what it feels like to be an artist.

You can feel this same kind of intimacy on the instrumental tracks too—like the short passage “Dust beam.” Her light guitar playing almost hides behind layers of hiss, popping out at certain notes to show itself more clearly. It has that sleepy, sad feeling of being alone and watching dust fall in the light of the window.

And through it all, the album is overflowing with mystery. A song like “River mouth”—I’m hesitant to even try to interpret, yet I find it makes my heart swell the way her surrealistic lyrics mesh with the music rising and falling. So many times across the album, I wonder how she was able to make these sounds. The bits we do know about its creation are fascinating—uplifted even more by the parts we don’t.

Buch says the album took five years to make because that was “the time it needed.” I’ve thought about that a lot these past few months as I’ve burrowed myself into the album. There’s so much pressure to create faster and faster—to meet the demands of fans, to keep the public’s attention, to feed the algorithms. There’s even pressure to consume faster. Why was I frustrated for not finding it sooner, instead of just being happy the album found me when I needed it?

Suntub reminds me to be patient. Patient with myself, with others, with the art I take in. I bet in five years, I’ll find even more to know and love about this album. I hope by then I’ve learned to slow down.

As Buch says on the closer: “You’re working it out, you’ll be working it out.”

Stray Thoughts

LISTENING: Bruiser Wolf - POTLUCK

I feel insane when I try to explain what Bruiser Wolf does and why he’s so brilliant. He raps like a mix between a pastor and a 1950s newscaster, his inflection both calm and stoic while completely erratic. And on top of that, almost every line is a punchline or some crazy double entendre. Based out of Detroit, Bruiser Wolf is a part of Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade Collective. I’ve primarily listened to Bruiser through his features, like his work with Danny Brown or his recent appearance on billy woods’ “BLACK XMAS.” He’s also shown up on records from Curren$y and Seattle’s own AJ Suede.

He recently dropped a new album POTLUCK. I wasn’t sure how his unique flow would work on a full-length, and I’m pleased to say my hesitations were for nothing. POTLUCK is a joy to listen to. I’m addicted to the way Bruiser’s voice jumps up and down (and I FEAR I find MYself talking to MYself in HIS inflection (BRUISER!)). His writing is inspiring, insanely clever (“A line about a bird, that's a crow bar,” “AP real like the month after March,” etc. and these are just the PG examples). With beats from Knxwledge, Nicholas Craven, Harry Fraud, Sango and more, I just know I’m going to be spinning this all summer.

A Quick Appreciation for You

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone who has subscribed to Another Thought so far. There are now over 600 of you following along each week, and I don’t take that for granted (even if I can’t totally wrap my head around it).

I’m incredibly grateful you’re here, digging in as I explore new ideas and obsessions. I’ve got plans for what’s next: more essays, more comics, more interviews—and maybe even some of that coveted physical media we all love so much.

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More to come soon. Thanks for being here.

20th Century Ambient Coming in November

My upcoming book, 20th Century Ambient, is now available for pre-order! If you’ve been enjoying the blend of music deep dives and comics in Another Thought, I think you’ll really love this.

“Through text and comics, 20th Century Ambient searches through ambient music's recent history to unearth how the genre has evolved and the role it plays in our daily lives.”

It’s out November 13, 2025 from Bloomsbury Books. Don’t miss your chance to reserve a copy now.