Vuzh Music Blog

2011, my 20th year in music, was a very active year for me, even given the fact that I began a hiatus from creating music after the first third of the year.
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My releases
I re-released Crook’d Finger vs. Harlan / Crook’d Finger vs. D.Rhythm:O early in the year…
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Not long after that came the massive compilation The More Unknown C. Reider, a collection of artists using sounds appropriated from my work to compose their own music.
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Then there was what I consider to be my ‘major’ work of the year, Owning Extinctions, a response, in sound, to the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Modisti was kind enough to release my experiments with sine waves, Formerly Sine Drones in June.
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I re-released a very early collaborative work featuring myself, Carrie from Auzel and Terry from Histatic Charge. We called ourselves The Unseelie Court, and our one off release from 1995 titled Fall also came out in June.
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Finally, I released the inaugural track for the Dystimbria netlabel, a difficult slab of calming drones and sharp noise titled “A Strange Seed”, which used sounds donated by Thomas Park of Mystified, Dave Seidel of Mysterybear and Miquel Parera Jaques.
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New Labels / New Projects
As mentioned, I also began the new netlabel Dystimbria, which is now up to its sixth release. It explores the area between ambient music and noise music with each new track drawing source material from the music that came before.
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I also created a new subsection of Vuzh Music called Vuzh Underground Editions for releasing classics from the cassette underground into the CC netlabel underground.
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My biggest project of the year won’t come into fruition until the Spring of 2012, it’s an exhibition of sound art which I am curating as a student project for Front Range Community College. I have a new website for it here: Sound Through Barriers.
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Releases on Vuzh Music
This year, my netlabel Vuzh Music released a varied lot of cool music, all of which is licensed in the Creative Commons, and is free to download:

• The Implicit Order – They Live in the Sky
• Apollon – Nox
• Auzel – Old
• Histatic Charge – Histatic Charge
• Saffron Slumber – Piano Drones

It’s the end of year, and I always look forward to reading the end of year best of lists for netlabel music, as it’s a great way to see if I missed anything.
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I’m still working on my own best of 2011 list, so definitely look for that in the coming weeks…
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In the meantime, I’m pleased to see that some of my works and those released on my two netlabels have gotten some appreciation in best of lists.
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Both Mystified’s top 10 list, and the top 10 by Acts of Silence gave a nod to Owning Extinctions by C. Reider. Thanks to both of you!
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Acts of Silence also lists “Cheptel éparpillé” by Le Berger in his top 10, this track was released on my brand new netlabel Dystimbria.cc, where you can find it and download it for free.
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Also receiving mentions in Acts of Silence’s 100 notable netlabel releases list were Vuzh Music releases of Apollon – Nox and Auzel – Old and C. Reider’s release on Modisti netlabel “Formerly Sine Drones”.

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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A list of some of the stuff planned for (the first part of) 2011.
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• Promote the new Crook’d Finger release! It’s out now! It rules! Go HERE!
• School: Cad Inventor & Museum Studies this semester.
• Listen to more Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman & Keith Fullerton Whitman, because I am not as familiar with those artists as I would like to be.
• Listen to LOTS more netlabel music.
• Make beautiful objects.
• Re-release an album previously released on CDr in EXTREMELY limited quantities by a guy who collaborated with Muslimgauze, (details forthcoming in the next months)
• Finish the 20 year anniversary compilation (there’s still time to contribute if you’re a musician: go HERE for details)
• Maybe get that handheld recorder for site recordings?
• Finish the major release for C. Reider… consider the big collaborative project that may or may not go along with it. If the collaborative project is decided against, then I need to find some way to move Vuzh Music more into the realm of curated netlabel featuring many other artists and not just my music.
• Complete the re-master for the Unseelie Court & re-release that.
• Mix & master & release the Tarkatak collaboration (following up from 1998’s the Druser Pricid)
• Finish & release the cassette release that I have in the works. Take that cassette, when done, and TRADE with it.
• Consider the ‘Pulsa’ project idea. There are a couple of directions it could go in.
• Consider the follow-up Crook’d Finger that’s been moldering on the hard drive for years. Also consider the ‘compilation tracks’ release.