- Words Notion Staff
Suren Seneviratne takes us around the world in 60 minutes with an exclusive mix shining a light on artists pushing the envelope with technological expression.
Suren Seneviratne is a Sri Lankan born, London based visual artist, model and musician who, for the last decade, has explored experimental sound and moving image media. He tells us that “since 2018″ he’s been “occasionally sharing some of my favourite ‘hidden gem’ music on Instagram in a bid to spotlight records that I think truly deserves a bigger audience. It is music that traverses boundaries, defies the binary of genre and challenges convention by virtue of its expression.”
He continues: “For a long time, there was a kind of music I was often drawn to but never knew quite how to define. Music that bridged continents and spoke many languages with elements of both the old and new while sounding like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was only after chancing upon the term Fourth World that it all started to make sense. It’s a term American trumpeter Jon Hassell coined as “a unified primitive/futuristic sound”. Ever since discovering this aesthetic, it has led me down a rabbit hole of deeply evocative music that I’ve since become obsessed with, as if I’d known it all my life. I guess it spoke to me as a Third Culture Kid.”
Summing up how this all ties together in his mix for Notion, Suren explains: “This 60 minute mix is a globetrotting affair that visits various moods and styles from Türkiye, Switzerland, USA, Sweden, Ireland, Japan, India and beyond while shining a light on artists that pushed the envelope with technological expression. It is the sound of the global diaspora, for those who don’t believe in borders”. Tune into Suren’s selections below.