It won't have gone unnoticed that, in terms of output, it's been a quiet few years for Suda. Hives marks his first full solo release since the sparse yet hectic dancefloor impact of Pleasure Flood / Abondance in 2014. Over the last two years, Hives has been painstakingly carved out of a strange and contradictory mindset.
approaches music projects in the same way that some people approach video games. There is an objective, a challenge to be overcome that requires relentless self-improvement, self-adjustment and trial and error. At the same time, it is a hedonistic, serotonin-inducing escape. You are devoting your time to a task that relinquishes the drudgery of everyday routine and logic, with no typically productive 'goal' in sight. In short, Suda is an artist who is as likely to sit down and make a club track as he is to meticulously and pointlessly transcribe Golden Brown by The Stranglers note for MIDI note, or attempt to build his own version of the audio illusion known as the Shepard Tone.
However tempting it is after a period of noticeable artistic development, it would be wrong then to characterise this as Suda's coming of age EP, or 'Her Records growing up'. In a lot of ways, this is precisely the opposite, and all the more freakishly exciting for it.