Vuzh Music Blog

C. Reider has a track on Stasisfield’s second wave of Mer-Wer, together with a few comrades & peers, and a couple of names previously unknown to me.
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The track I submitted, “Disperse”, will be remixed for my upcoming noise-ambient record about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which will be coming out in the first months of 2011.
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Meanwhile, check out the Mer-Wer tracks here:
http://www.stasisfield.com/space/mer-wer/

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.”
— Ghandi

Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet, today released a compilation of “sonic activism” in protest of a dismissive ‘critique’ of Susan Philipsz work, and the fact of any sound artist winning the Turner Prize written by Richard Dorment, published in the Telegraph.
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I was happy to have a brief piece included on the compilation… I have to say all of that music by a lot of artists that I admire, all based on the sound of sighs is pretty dreamy stuff. Great concept & execution!
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I recommend reading Marc’s insightful description of the motivation for the compilation, and then downloading it, or streaming it. All of this can be done if you follow this link:
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http://disquiet.com/2010/12/20/lowlands-a-sigh-collective/
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It was a good year for netlabel releases, and that is for certain!
I mean it: download everything on this page. You had better.
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We’ll start with a brief roundup of my releases this year and then move on to my favorite releases by other artists.
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It was a bit of a sparse go-round for Vuzh Music this year, but I did put out a really great remix of a split tape from 1991 by PBK and Vidna Obmana which I hope you didn’t miss:
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C. Reider – Fragment Three Re-Works
http://www.vuzhmusic.com/releases/fragment.html
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Dark Winter netlabel also put out a collaboration between me & Desohll of a longform guitar darkambient piece. Quite dark, somewhat ambient as well.
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C. Reider / Desohll – Falling into Disrepair
http://www.darkwinter.com/dw072.html
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I’m pretty sure 2011 is going to see a whole lot more activity at Vuzh Music, so watch out!
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Now on to my favorite netreleases this year. All but one are free to download. They are presented here in alphabetical order, because I could not rate them, they’re all too good.
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Andreas Brandal – Breaking a Mirror
http://andreasbrandal.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/new-mini-album/
Calm cinematic soundtrack-ish atmospheres and scenarios. It is constructed like a kind of collage music, but breaks into intimate little musical themes with real instruments. Quite lovely. I will need some more of this composer’s work.
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Das, Jeph Jerman, John Hudak, PBK – Chain Mail Collab June 28, 1988
http://soundgenetic.blogspot.com/2010/11/das-jeph-jerman-john-hudak-pbk-chain.html
Old school looping industrial noise. This sound never gets old for me.
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Christian Doil – Eis
http://justnotnormal.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/jnn090-christian-doil-eis/
A chilly collection of pinging synth tones, plucky percussives and arctic belltones working through fluctuating musical themes while accompanied by icy, ghostly drones. The crystal cathedral, indeed.
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The Euphoric Hum – A Circle of Equal Altitude
http://www.archive.org/details/isor016ACircleOfEqualAltitude
Churning noisy ambience that intensifies and dissipates in dramatic ways. New sounds continually enter the mix, keeping things interesting. A sort of diffuse industrial/minimal techno throb emerges from the ambient noise.
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Fosel – Problem of Universals (C. Reider Remixes)
http://earthmantra.com/release-detail.php?id=146
Is it bad form to nominate this as a best of 2010 when it’s a remix of my own music? Well, for me it honestly is a great album. Ambient beat music done beautifully.
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Gurdonark – Butterflies of North Texas
http://fluttersongs.blogspot.com/2010/07/gurdonark-butterflies-of-north-texas_24.html
Gurdonark’s unique brand of sampling-synth musical fancies takes a move into slightly darker territories than last year’s wonderful “Seven Virtues”. Don’t look for scary dark ambient or anything though! Self-described “kid music” with odd modes, interesting sounds and unexpected changes.
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The Implicit Order – s/t
http://www.archive.org/details/sPE_0049
I’ve been a full-throated advocate for the music of Anthony Washburn for years. This new effort does not disappoint. His haunting blend of looping samples alternate between creepy and jarring, and is always intriguing. “Dumb Generation” = great song title!
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Miquel Parera Jaques – nx004_Automatic
http://www.archive.org/details/nx004_Automatic
Tinnitus drones moving along algorithmic flight paths. Computer music for hypnotizing organic life forms.
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John Kannenberg – Oculus
http://www.wanderingear.com/we014.html
The basis of this album is a set of site recordings of various video projection mechanisms in art museums. High strength of concept and execution. Those gorgeous ultra high frequencies in “Television Monitor”, jeez, how did he do that so beautifully?
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Christopher McFall – A Long Time Running for the Suicide Strays
http://www.archive.org/details/rb090
Sepia loops of tones & textures clustering and spreading apart. Unmissable.
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Meteer – Unless
http://www.bfwrecordings.com/releases/Meteer/Unless/
Blocks of odd samples move in rhythmic patterns a la Biosphere or Taylor Deupree. Somehow, even with all the ring modulation and lo-fidelity and occasional distortion, (not to mention lack of overt beats) it still feels like a lush ambient techno piece.
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Mutamassik – That Which Death Cannot Destroy
http://www.roughamericana.com/publicfiles/MUTAMASSIKThatWhichDeathCannotDestroy___.zip
Messed up hip-hop instrumental music with middle Eastern samples, the beats start off totally mutant and then they go and mutate some more. Fans of Muslimgauze will enjoy this.
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Mystified – A Pale But Lasting Hope
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/mystified-palehope/
Mystified puts out a lot of good stuff, and then he puts out some fucking great stuff. This release falls into the latter category. Rattling percussion elements and zigzagging synthetics form imaginary sonic structures. Loops that fall out of sync. Among my top favorite things I’ve ever heard from this artist. Please note that this release is on Magnatune, and so it streams freely, but you need to pay a $15 fee before you can download (but then you can also download everything else in their catalog).
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Kurt Nimmo (Fosel) – Complex Silence 8
http://www.archive.org/details/complex_silence_8
No fair, Mr. Fosel made it to the list twice this year! This guy puts out some great damned percussive ambient music. Includes a remix of Phillip Wilkerson and two remixes of C. Reider. Bonus points for the Kurt Vonnegut reference. Not sure whom to credit, because the cover says Fosel and the ID3 tags say Kurt Nimmo. Ah well.
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Olifaunt – Innocent of the Smoke and Noise
http://www.archive.org/details/InnocentOfTheSmokeAndNoise
Olifaunt just keeps improving and improving. I think this is the best outing yet from this composer. Extremely minimal, quiet, calming string work with elements of drone/trance and musical progression. Very pretty ambient album.
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PBK – Appeal
http://soundgenetic.blogspot.com/2010/12/pbk-appeal-1989.html
A newly remastered digital re-release of a cassette from 1989. Early PBK tapes were pretty heavily loved by me, so it’s great to hear them again all cleaned up! Industrial quality machine noise that accumulates a calmed atmosphere better than most ambient music… pricks at your imagination.
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V/A – Despite the Downturn: An Answer Album
http://www.archive.org/details/DespiteTheDownturnAnAnswerAlbum
Marc Weidenbaum’s sonic activism compilation reacting to an article by Megan McArdle in the Atlantic Monthly, in which artists used the article’s accompanying illustration as a graphic score. Nice concept, and lots of cool music on here, including one piece by yours truly.
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V/A – No-R-Mal II
http://justnotnormal.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/jnn100-various-artists-no-r-mal-ii/
The only person that can out-do Mark Stolk, it appears, is Mark Motherfucking Stolk! His five hour long compilation of netlabel artists from last year was followed up by a SEVEN hour long compilation this year… seven fucking hours of cool underground music, as good an overview of the netlabel underground as you can get, period.

One of the netlabel under-world’s resident saints, Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet, is writing for Boingboing for a short while — and he’s used the opportunity to post about netlabels with a very nicely done, surface-scratching, invite-you-to-discover-more-for-yourself overview:

Netlabels: Release, Remix, Repeat
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Here’s a remix I did for a contest being hosted by Coca Cola, Burn Studios & SoundCloud. I don’t normally participate in these kinds of things, but I really dig Plastikman & thought it’d be fun to do a mix.
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Mine doesn’t go “oontzz oontzz oontzz” much. I have a feeling that the winning entry will go “oontzz oontzz oontzz”. One doesn’t have to “win” to succeed however.
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PLASTIKMAN – Ask Yourself (C. Reider Remix @burnstudios) by vuzhmusic

The year 2011 will be my 20th year composing strange music and releasing it mostly for free (previously I released on cassettes, now on the internet).
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To mark this milestone, I kinda thought it’d be a fun thing to do to ask my comrades in underground music (whether you’re familiar with my music or not — whether we know each other or are not yet total BFFs) to extract sound samples from any of my releases over the last twenty years and tweak them however you like and re-assemble them into a musical work of your own invention. I’m looking less for “remixes” and more for imaginative and individual expressions made with collaged bits and chunks of my work (whether recognizable as such or not — in fact, manipulation, editing & effecting of source sounds is to be encouraged).
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Most of my downloadable releases are CC licensed allowing derivative work, so you’re only limited by what you can think up. You can find links to almost everything I’ve ever done on my netlabel’s front page: http://vuzhmusic.com. A more comprehensive discography (including links to my work with Drone Forest) can be found on my bio page.
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I guess this project is a bit like tooting my own horn, but what the hell? No one else will toot the damn thing. I may even just name the compilation “An All-Star Gala Tribute to the Enduring Genius of C. Reider” 🙂
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I haven’t yet decided if that threat is a joke or not.
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Particulars:

• Compilation will be a free-to-download release on Vuzh Music netlabel. It will be CC licensed (probably Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)
• Submissions should be in high bitrate mp3 files (DON’T FORGET ID3 TAGS)
• Send me a link to where I can download the file when you’ve got one ready. My email address can be found at the contact link at the Vuzh Music website. You could also direct message me on Twitter, you can find me there as vuzhmusic.
• Keep your track(s?) under 10 minutes in length.
• Hoping to release in early 2011. Deadline maybe February 1??? EXTENDED to February 11.
• Everything is negotiable, including this sentence.
• Leave me a comment here if you want to participate… unless you like surprises, in which case just get the track to me before the deadline!
• Guys! I’m already thinking of extending the deadline, and no one’s even asked me yet!

There is, in this mini essay by Mixgalaxy Records, a discussion we should be having in the netlabel underground.
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Clearly, yes, there is very little intracommunication between netlabel artists who do not already know each other… there is very, very little community-wide feedback. This is something I’ve been saying for years. I had the great pleasure of having participated in the final ‘golden years’ of the cassette underground. With each tape trade there was an exchange of letters, and often there was a follow up once both traders had a chance to listen to the other’s work. Sometimes this led to a friendly connection. Other times just a polite comaradery, or in some cases a dismissive ‘nice try, just not my kinda thing’. For what it was, there was at least some feedback, even if brief.
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The author of the Mixgalaxy essay is correct to accuse the netlabel underground of ‘silence’. It’s shameful the total vacuum that people’s efforts disappear into. I may not necessarily be composing my own music for an audience, but I do feel it’s part of the experience to occasionally have someone contact me and say “Hey, really weird stuff… I dig it.” As Gurdonark says in the comments to the Mixgalaxy post “A listener need not spend 16 dollars on a CD to download a netlabel album, but spending 30 seconds on an e mail or 5 seconds on a tweet is a form of ‘payment’ netlabel owners crave.”
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My biggest beef with the netlabel underworld has long been that although I myself am constantly listening to netlabel releases by artists that I frequently know little about, and recommending them via email or Twitter or through this blog (check out this post, or this one, or this one, this, this, this, or this one for example), I see only a small minority of other netlabel supporters doing the same. Most of the time the only interaction some netlabels/artists have with anyone is a promo blurb about some new release — or ten new releases. There may as well be a mechanoid behind some of these labels. Do they listen to their peers? Do they even know their peers exist? Who knows? But hey, they have several new releases this month. Why even participate in a community if you don’t want to communicate?
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Where I disagree with the author is the false dichotomy of netlabel with commercial music. I don’t see that the average artist in the net underground is at all ‘hoping for that big break’ that’ll help them cross that supposed thin line that separates the two worlds, and they’ll suddenly be rich and famous. Net artists have embraced obscurity, and why not? Obscurity is a virtue. Yes; we all want more listeners, yes; we even want fans, but the kind of music most of us make is just never going to have a hope of being popular, and we all know it. I for one am happy to reach more and more listeners, but I am happy with a slow and small accumulation of appreciative listeners. I feel like I can be honest to my own creative direction (which is something I take very seriously), with this approach. I may be misreading the essay, but I simply don’t agree with the diagnosis that netlabels’ problems have to do with money not being involved. I think the free aesthetic is one of the strongest bonding elements we all have.
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I want a more inclusive and supportive community of netlabel artists than there is currently. Perhaps this can change. I have seen signs lately that point to ‘scene boosting’ activity… the Mixgalaxy Records blog post itself is a pretty good sign of this.
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It occurs to me, perhaps, that what the community might have a need for is a more centralized method of communication. Mail art had some central hubs… Ashley Parker Owens’ Global Mail filled that role for a while. The cassette underground had Gajoob, and later Autoreverse (among others)… the net underground is completely de-centralized, which can be a strength, but it definitely doesn’t lead to a sense of community. Right now, it’s every man/label for himself. I may not be the chummiest guy in the whole wide world, but I sure as shit reject that kind of isolationism.

Here’s a new exclusive track on SoundCloud:
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Golden Misesians by vuzhmusic
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“And in these times there will rise a sect of golden idiot monks, who will lead many down a path of lunacy and ruin. They will promise freedom if you will only give THEM the power.”
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This is actually a radical (of course) remix of an earlier exclusive SoundCloud release called “Socialism is Evil”:
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Socialism is Evil by vuzhmusic

The Disruptive Platypus blog has offered up a brief, but positive review of my recent collaboration with Desohll “Falling into Disrepair” out on the Dark Winter netlabel.
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Read the review here