Vuzh Music Blog

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https://plus.google.com/115824106778896363774

C. Reider was interviewed by old friend & colleague Ian Stewart for the resurrected online version of AUTOreverse magazine. This is the first interview I’ve done in well over a decade. I enjoyed the peculiar challenge of explaining myself, and I hope you enjoy reading what I’ve got to say.
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excerpt:

I am a voracious listener. I listen to loads of music, as much new stuff as possible all the time. I listen to my surroundings everywhere I go… there are interesting sounds everywhere. I try not to listen to what people say, if I can help it, but I do listen to the way they say it, I love voices and inflections and accents. All sound influences me. Listening is maybe something like a religion.

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Read the entire monstrosity here:
http://autoreversetoinfinity.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/interview-c-reider-of-vuzh-music/

A new release by a new artist on Vuzh Music! Auzel’s debut release is called “Old”. It is a diverse set of peculiar, tiny, composed vignettes that suggest contemporary avant-garde composition as much as freak-folk or hometaper weirdness.
keywords: weird, dreamy folk, female vocals, lo-fi
http://www.vuzhmusic.com/releases/auzel_old.html
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Disquiet, the essential website for ambient / electronic music, has published an article called “Time of the Sines” about my latest album “Formerly Sine Drones” with some interesting commentary about how it was made:
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http://disquiet.com/2011/07/11/c-reider-modisti-sine-wave/
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The sine wave is arguably the most rudimentary building block of electronic music. It is the source for various forms of synthesis: a simple sonic object that can be tweaked, prodded, processed, and layered to create new sounds. Simple as its sonic makeup is, that undulating up and down cycle, it can be, in the hands of some musicians, an object of intense aural attention unto itself. C. Reider has made a prolific habit of using constraints as a means toward creative ends, perhaps most notably in the employment of early drum machines in the production of music for which rhythm is not the main point. On his recent freely downloadable album Formerly Sine Drones, released by the Modisti netlabel, Reider makes several different sine waves do marvelous things.

The tracks range from wildly active to deeply sedate. The latter is the case with the album’s final cut (MP3), titled “777 Hz.” All the tracks are named for the frequency of the sine wave from which they are built, ranging between “12 Hz” to “3456 Hz,” as chosen by followers of his twitter.com/vuzhmusic account when he put a call out for random numbers.

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There’s more explanatory info, a streaming track and a graphic illustration at the article:
http://disquiet.com/2011/07/11/c-reider-modisti-sine-wave/

I’ve been pleased to come across a couple of reviews recently, the first from the inimitable David Nemeth of Acts of Silence blog, who reviewed C. Reider’s “Formerly Sine Drones“, the new release on the Modisti netlabel.
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In his review “Multiple Functions” (nice pun) he says:

As Marc Weidenbaum wrote about C. Reider last year in the Disquiet review of Steam Inspector (2009), Reider is a ”deeply curious (and curiosity-inducing) musician”. Maybe it’s this curiosity for both musician and listener that makes C. Reider such a daring and admired experimental sound artist. On this blog, I’ve reviewed several works by Reider from his collaboration with Desohill, Falling Into Disrepair (2010); his recent solo work, Owning Extinctions (2011); his Crook’d Finger remixes (2000); and the community remix of C. Reider’s work (2011). But even if you listen to his other recent releases: Inconstant (2008), Linguism (2008), and the Electric Quintet series (2008-2009), one would experience an artist who doesn’t retread the same tired experimental hooks that were successful in previous releases. It is always something new. There are hundreds of electronic artists who call themselves “experimental” or “Avant-Garde”, but in reality they just are continuing in some sort of post-Commodore electronic noise genre that they are comfortable in. Reider does not do that. He produces work that always seems outside his comfort zone — something all experimental artists should being do. For his listeners the only thing we can expect from a C. Reider release is that it will be different from the previous C. Reider release.
Even though my dogs did not like is latest release on Modisti, Formerly Sine Drones, my curiosity as well as that of Reider’s makes this record a great addition to the musician’s discography. More than just tones and sound manipulations, Reider takes an atypical and almost deviant exploration into electronic frequencies.
http://www.actsofsilence.com/album-review/multiple-functions/

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The Agier blog’s feature “Recent Music Heroes” reviewed the 2011 Vuzh Music re-release of 2000’s “Crook’d Finger vs. Harlan / Crook’d Finger vs. D. Rhythm:O“, saying:

C. Reider is a unsung hero of darkly brooding electronic music who has been involved in music for about two decades, being very prolific as solo artist (under his own name; Luster; Crook`d Finger), having loads of collaborations and split albums, and having participated in such collective as Drone Forest. He has worked as musical reviewer and headed up a label titled as Vuzh Music. However, the initial release of this remastered version was issued 11 years ago. Someone called as Finger (ha-ha) has re-worked the versions of such artists as Harlan and D. Rhythm:O, respectively. The first side of the album (or the first side of the cassette release initially) is a bit more joyous industrial-based appearance mixing it up with Latin breaks and heavily stomping cadences and riffs. The flip side of it, however, it will be revolving around the axis of ominously sounding industrial techno, profound dystopiac reverberations and murky dub progressions. For instance, if you are deeply get involved in music of Justin Broadrick`s projects or the similar kind, this album must be heard at least as well.
http://agier.blogspot.com/2011/06/crookd-finger-vs-harlan-vs-drhythmo.html

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Fellow Coloradan Jeff Sampson of JeffSampsonMusic.com has unexpectedly written a review of this year’s Owning Extinctions by C. Reider. In the review, he suggests listening to the music while viewing a powerful set of photographs by J. Henry Fair at Industrial Scars of the BP Macondo oil spill.
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“Using a wide variety of sound sources, he’s created pieces that emphatically describe various parts of the heinous crime to our environment, and the lackadaisical reaction to it by the corporation directly involved and the government we’ve charged with protecting our way of life.”

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The review can be found here:
Jeff Sampson review of “Owning Extinctions”
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While there, be sure to hit his music player, sounds like this fellow has some pretty fine ambient music to enjoy.
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Meanwhile, enjoy again the SoundCloud track from this album:
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Underwater Plume by vuzhmusic

Beginning with the humble sine drone, in frequencies chosen at random (by asking Twitter friends to choose a number between zero and twenty-thousand!) I have created probably my most austere & minimalist compositions yet. The sine drones were treated using only equalization & dynamic effects to synthesize the seven complex drones featured on this twenty minute long experimental pure-electronics recording.
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Free to download from the Modisti netlabel here:
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http://modisti.com/11/?p=8711
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http://modisti.com/11/?p=8711

Martin Lee-Stephenson has been an active and interesting musical personality to follow, having worked under various artist names such as Doppler 20:20 and Vulse, worked in groups such as Spooncurve and Koan, and having worked with the much respected Muslimgauze and the industrial free-for-all collaborative Pigface.
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Vuzh Music is pleased to release “Nox”, a dark and gritty soundworld from his project Apollon. This album features murky and evocative soundloops, dark atmospheres, middle-Eastern percussion and lurching, square-wheeled rhythms.
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“Nox” includes a track called “Northern Persian Boy” which is a tribute to Bryn Jones of Muslimgauze.
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Rescued from total unavailability into mere extreme obscurity, The Implicit Order’s 1997 classic “They Live in the Sky” was originally released in a limited edition of 35, traded amongst friends and new contacts as one did in the cassette underground cassette underground before the advent of the internet.
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I did my own fair share of tape trading, and this tape was the first thing I’d heard from Anthony Washburn‘s project, and it made its way to my shelf of favorite tapes from my cassette days.
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Upon asking Anthony recently if I could re-release this tape on Vuzh Music, he mentioned that he didn’t have a copy of it himself, hadn’t even heard the material in years. This re-release of “They Live in the Sky” was taken from my own cassette copy, presented here in 320±VBR kbps mp3 for your pleasure.
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Acts of Silence, the blog of steadfast netlabel booster David Nemeth has written up Vuzh Music’s May 2011 release of C. Reider’s Owning Extinctions…
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Check out that review: Acts of Silence: Shame – Despair – Anger