Disquiet / Marc Wiedenbaum’s compilation “Despite the Downturn: An Answer Album” — on which I was pleased & honored to be able to appear — was noticed by Cory Doctorow & written up for the enormo-e-zine BoingBoing.
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http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/05/musicians-record-alb.html. Go check it out! It’s fun reading the comments there.
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Marc Wiedenbaum of the incredible online magazine Disquiet invited me a couple of weeks ago to contribute to a compilation of new music. The compilation is a “non-verbal response” to an article written by Megan McArdle that was published in the May 2010 issue of the Atlantic (still on the racks as of today).
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There are at least two major traditions in the intermingling of visual art and music. One is when musicians pay homage to an existing artwork, as in Morton Feldman’s musical tribute to the Rothko Chapel, or more recently Ted Nash’s “Portrait in Seven Shades” (a Jazz at Lincoln Center commission based on works from the Museum of Modern Art by Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack, and others).
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The other is when musicians treat a graphic image as a score, an approach with a strong avant-garde lineage. Among the best examples is Christian Marclay’s “Graffiti Composition.” It involved setting up musical notation paper all around Berlin, and then — after the blank staffs had been scrawled on, layered with advertisements, and otherwise damaged — collecting them and selecting those most redolent with musical potential. The pages were later collected as a book and are used as scores by musicians.
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This project, Despite the Downturn, is a mix of those two traditions: it’s an homage to a work that wasn’t intended to be read as music, and yet the homage involves treating it as a proper score.
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I was honored to have been asked to contribute, intrigued by the artistic protest angle of the concept and inspired by the ‘graphic score’ by Traum. I contributed a track called “StaffGrabbing” which mangles some appropriated samples of solo piano and hip hop drumbeats.
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Download the compilation for free from the Internet Archive here:
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Please also check out Disquiet’s new article announcing the release:
http://disquiet.com/2010/05/03/despite-the-downturn/
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and his original article responding to the McArdle piece:
What, After All, Is the “Music Industry”?
Please listen to my new piece of music. I recorded it today!
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It’s completely, intentionally derivative (of Steve Reich) but I’m still really happy with how it turned out, and with the emotional / political impact of it!
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You know you want to listen to this, come on, the title alone should compel you!
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My friend Anthony Washburn of the Implicit Order has re-released two compilations that he released back in the ’90s featuring a ton of stars of the hometaping underground in its last years before the internet took over. I appear on the first release with a track that is currently unavailable elsewhere.
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Squeezing Being
(featuring: De Fabriek, Anlage, Kirchenkampf, C. Reider, Yuri Jossa, BRF, Tom Allen Cox, Brutum Fulmen, The Implicit Order, Adam Bohman, Mothman, Antibody, The American Tract Society, Zan Hoffman.)
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Squeezing Being issue 2
(featuring: Big City Orchestra, Sveen, AMK, Grace, Doc Wor Mirran, Hjalmer Geiger, Turkey Makes Me Sleepy, Richard Ramirez, AMDF, The Implicit Order, Post Prandials, The Haters, Dieter Muh, Stream Angel, Blonde Jane 26)
I know it’s been a while since I wrote anything here, I promise I’ll be back! There are many items cooking on the Vuzh Music stovetop, but not much is ready to serve yet!
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In the meantime, please enjoy this soft and spacious ambient mix by Red Fog, which features the “White Cube Drone” by C. Reider:
Red Fog Ambient Mix Part I by Red Fog
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Tracklisting:
0:00……Numb Silence… The Air Of Bright Nights
5:25……Seetyca… An Exercise In Sonic Despair
9:00……Bagryanii Schliach… Ultima Thule
13:00….Stars Of The Lid… The Atomium Part III
16:55….Aim 23… Encounter
18:00….C. Reider… White Cube Drone
24:00….Mogwai Fear Satan… Mogwai (Surgeon Remix)
26:30….Henrik B…. Drifting
30:40….Inner Struggle… Night City Dreams
33:00….IOK-1… Dense Particles
37:50….Lustmord… Metastatic Resonance
45:00….Red Fog… Electric Skulls In The Frozen Sea
51:30….Seetyca… Vielleicht Erlischt Das Licht
54:20….Rick Hawkins… Impulse
57:00….Monokit… H-Drone
61:00….IOK-1… Spores
64:30….Lull… Time
69:25….Porzellan… Anaximander Gardens
74:20….I.M.M.U.R.E… Somnia
I’ve begun work on a second collaboration with Tarkatak this weekend. Some of the work I’ve come up with so far sounds pretty good. I just hope this one doesn’t take three years to be completed, like the last time we collaborated!
I am the DJ I yam what I yam.
Don’t turn around no, don’t turn around.
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Uh. Here’s a mix I did of some minimal techno, and industrial, and other stuff, some of which informed my Electret Quintet project. I hope you like it.
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Electret mix by vuzhmusic
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You can download the whole thing at 320kbps at the Soundcloud page for this mix:
http://soundcloud.com/vuzhmusic/electret-mix
Heathen Harvest posted a review of my collaboration with PBK that was put out this last Summer by Impulsy Stetoskopu
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It’s kind of a funny review. It makes it sound like PBK was knocking on my door at all hours all doe-eyed hoping for a collaboration, and I was cruelly turning him down for ten years. The actual story is that Phillip had done several mixes from sources I sent him towards the goal of a collaboration. Those mixes appear on the CD as the first, fourth and seventh tracks. I was really impressed with those mixes, and I didn’t feel originally that I could match the quality of them, and so I kinda psyched myself out. Ten years later, I snapped out of it! So it goes.
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Meanwhile, here’s the review, there are only a couple of copies left with me (here), I don’t know for sure, but PBK might have some left if I run out, regardless they’re going fast!
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Artist: Split Album / Collaboration
Title: PBK + C. Reider – Discorporate
Label: Impulsy Stetoskopu Records Poland
Genre: Drone
Track Listing:
1-7: Untitled
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Over the last decade, drone machine PBK has been trying to get the attention of C. Reider in hopes of doing some sort of musical collaboration. Alas, nothing ever came of this correspondence. But hold on there, the story’s not done at that point. Earlier this year, Reider finally responded by sending in the mail to PBK a parcel with a finished master in it that would be the building block if you like, the foundation for what has become Discorporate. PBK, the drone-meister of the indie-underground listened to the source material and liked what he heard. What fascinated him most was the mood of the music – a number of untitled mixes that were neo-psychedelic in nature; spacey, ethereal, atmospheric and very ambient-drone oriented.
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Well, PBK put in his own two cents’ worth to make it a genuine collaboration and the result is this 7-track drone-lovers wet dream. Something that will numb the mind and body. At certain points he is content with just letting the pre-programmed synthesizers do the work and just twist some knobs to tweak it just so.
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C. Reider is a man from Colorado that has been putting his own mark on the drone scene of late. Although Discorporate was recorded on Poland’s Impulsy Stetoskopu record label, Reider records his stuff for the indie label, Vuzh Records. If you go to Reider’s MySpace page you can check out for yourself what he sounds like on his own. No newcomer to the indie DIY drone scene, Reider’s got a lot of brilliant ideas flowing through his head, There again you come to that thin line between genius and madness – is he a brave new world of sound and vision or just a nut who’s warped brain has turned him into a nightmare soundtrack-making machine? Hard to tell sometimes, but the answer is definitely the former. Just take a listen to his “October22wCR-78”, the first track on his front page, profile MySpace playlist, or the following cut, “February 14 f TR-606”.
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What these guys may lack in imagination in naming their songs, they make up for with the little nuances and tics here and there throughout; because really, without a little something spicy mixed in at certain (layered) levels, the “drone” aspect of it all becomes a bit, well droll after a while. So the musical marriage of these two drone and experimental music machine-toolers reflect a future that is both enticing, ominous and right on the knife’s edge – anything can happen (and usually does).
Given yesterday’s post about the best free downloadable albums of 2009 I should also make mention of a couple of incredible albums that came out last year that aren’t free, and you can’t download. Both I list here are by underground artists, if you choose to buy them, you’ll be buying from the artist directly, and you’ll be making the world a better place, not to mention giving yourself the gift of some great music.
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Michael J. Bowman – Psychic Borderland
Unequivocally one of my absolute favorite albums of the year. Brimming with a kind of hallucinatory melancholy coupled with catchy hooks, this album could be compared with Grandaddy’s better work, but that just doesn’t do the thing any kind of justice. On this album you’ll hear beautifully textured, potent, heart-tugging, sculptural songs and even one seventeen minute long technicolor scrambled egg trip down the hellhole worthy of comparison to Nurse With Wound. The kind of imaginative recording on display here should reap Mike some kind of award. If I had one I’d fuckin’ give it to him. Congratulations Mike, aside from that one Beatles remaster I bought, this is hands down my favorite pop music of the year.
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Mystified – Pulse Ringer Pieces
Mystified on vinyl. Do I need to say any more? I’m actually not sure I could add to the review I did back in January other than to say that I listen to vinyl a lot, and this lovely blue record found it’s way onto my turntable quite a lot during this last year.
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If I were made of money, I’d buy both of these for everyone reading this. But I’m not, and they’re really not very expensive so I hope you’ll buy them. Do it for me!
You know how you’re like a netlabel and stuff, and you release some new recording, and you can see from your stats that only one guy listened to it? I might have been that guy!
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Here were my favorite netlabel releases of 2009, all are freely downloadable, so maybe YOU can be hit number TWO on someone’s statcounter!
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1. Gurdonark – Seven Virtues
At a time when it would have been much more fashionable to put out an album dedicated to the seven deadly sins featuring dark and gloomy doom sounds, this charming collection of light musical fancies celebrates what’s to be admired about the human spirit. (some of Gurdonark’s thoughts on making this album)
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2. Hannah M.G. Shapero (a.k.a. Altocumulus) – My Name is Marietta Cashman
Not many of us can claim to have recorded experimental music on a Buchla modular synthesizer in the late sixties when merely an adventurous teenager, but Hannah Shapero can. Culled from forgotten tape reels, unheard for 40 years, this treasure of naive noodling sounds fresh and innocent, a stark contrast to modern noodles by hipster cognoscenti. At the moment the accompanying photo of Hannah was taken in 1970, in her futuristic silver jumpsuit and glasses in front of the synth modules, she looks like she may have been the coolest nerdy girl in the universe. Modern Noodles by Hipster Cognoscenti would make a damned fine band name.
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3. Mystified – Collusion (with PBK, the Implicit Order, KR-Ohm & Kwalijk) – A collection of guys I admire working with sound sources provided by another guy I admire. This is a collection of the kinds of sounds I love, loopy and squiggly and gritty and crunchy. Quietnoise of the highest order!
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4. Various Artists – No-R-Mal
Oh, hullo! What’s this? FIVE FUCKING HOURS of top notch weirdness from 50 underground artists? I keep coming back to this and finding new gems all the time. Stunning.
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5. Chubby Wolf – Meandering Pupa
A brief collection of smooth ambience, dancing slowly, exactly in-between light and dark. The prolific artist behind Chubby Wolf, Dani Baquet-Long, (also one half of celebrated ambient artists Celer) passed away in July, suddenly, at the age of 26. The entire underground network was saddened by the loss.
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6. Pavonine – Pavonine
Dark, vaporous, mysterious, alluring? Sure, all that and more.
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7. Dexp Lab – Sectors LP
A fine collision of rhythm and noise.
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8. PBK – Asmus Sources (plus pretty much everything else on soundgenetic)
I have to admit, somewhat embarrassedly, that when I bought the Asmus Tietchens / PBK collaboration from Realization way back in the early nineties, it didn’t entirely gel for me. I loved both artists apart, but this album just didn’t quite get there. This year, PBK released the sound source files that he originally sent to Asmus for their collaboration, and upon hearing these imagination-pricking sounds, I decided a re-evaluation of the actual collaboration was in order, and now I find that it all makes sense. I’m not at all sure what I was thinking back in the 90s. I may simply not have been mature enough to get it! Now, I love both the collab, and these raw, stripped down sources equally. This is a rare chance to compare and contrast the working methods of two great minds in abstract music.
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9. Olifaunt – Three Crows Become Four
Slow growing drone ambient with stringy textures and melancholy tones.
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10. Zondagmorgen – La Fin du Monde
So apparently the end of the world is slow, blurred and extremely melancholy. The world ends with us gazing at our shoes. Alright then.
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Don’t forget to also check out my blog post about all the stuff I did this decade, including my own big project for 2009, the Electret Quintet.