CONSCIOUS SUMMARY “Exhaustions” C32 (Skin Trade)




Samur Khouja left Los Angeles for India one day, spending a month on the road there before returning home and recording “Exhaustions,” which he conceived on his journey. I, on the other hand, went to California for a wedding for six days and returned home and did basically nothing. I guess I listened to Conscious Summary. Wrote about it a bit.

Having clearly proven that Khouja has a more drive one single pinkie finger than I do in my whole body, I now turn to “Exhaustions” itself, three tracks composed for synthesizer and voice that overtake your attention. The tracks hover there, like landscape covered in fog, and move in slow motion, punctuated here and there by bursts of noise and shrouded in a sort of orchestral ambience. It’s a bit creepy, I’ll give it that, and it sounds perfect right about now in the days leading up to Halloween.

But “Exhaustions” isn’t a “Halloween” record – it’s much more of a mood piece, and connecting it to Khouja’s Indian jaunt is important. In it you can hear the weariness of experience and interaction, as well as the intrigue of traveling through and discovering new places. Eyes widen and dim in the ebbs and flows of an endless voyage. It’s all here – the full experience. (Re)live it with Conscious Summary.

Skin Trade


--Ryan