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

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/

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!

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

ARTIST: C. Reider / Desohll
TITLE: Falling Into Disrepair
LABEL: Dark Winter
KEYWORDS: Darkambient

Celebrate Autumn, celebrate entropy with this dark ambient epic…
“Falling Into Disrepair” by C. Reider / Desohll
A free download from the Dark Winter netlabel.

http://www.darkwinter.com/dw072.html

There are three new releases to announce!
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Just out today is a dark ambient epic, C. Reider & Desohll team up for “Falling Into Disrepair” out on the Dark Winter netlabel… very slow dark guitar drones to celebrate entropy and Autumn.
Click the link for the free release:
http://www.darkwinter.com/dw072.html
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Out this week on Earth Mantra netlabel is a new release by Fosel called “Problem of Universals (C. Reider Remixes)”. Kurt Nimmo has produced some disorienting & spacious remixes of my Electret Quintet tracks. I think they’re great.
Click the link for the free release:
http://earthmantra.com/problemofuniversals
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Finally, a compilation from Intelligent Machinery by way of the Just Not Normal netlabel, “Of Places and Moments” features 18 different compositions made using sound sources from Sighup’s site recordings. Many different takes, one unifying concept. I have a track called “Core Exit”, named after a popular oil dispersant.
Click the link for the free release:
http://justnotnormal.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/imc02-of-places-and-moments/
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Hope you enjoy these.

This new release by Fosel on the Earth Mantra Netlabel is a remix of C. Reider’s 3 hour electronic opus Electret Quintet.
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Earth Mantra #earman146
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Format: 320Kbps MP3
Number of tracks: 5
Genres: Ambient, Electronic, Abstract, Dark Ambient, Experimental
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Direct URL: earthmantra.com/problemofuniversals
Release Mirror Site: Click Here
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Download: #1 (146 MB) Download Help
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Experimental ambient alchemist Kurt Nimmo returns to Earth Mantra with an invigorating new Fosel release entitled Problem of Universals (C. Reider Remixes).
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Unlike Fosel’s previous Earth Mantra release Couriers of the Air, this new album presents a collection of remixes of original pieces composed by C. Reider, off of his 2009 release Electret Quintet, itself a study of analog drum machines and their use in experimental electronic music. Where the Electret Quintet music pulses with the energy of experimental IDM, Problem of Universals instead conveys a more subdued vibe, packaged in a gritty and yet quite beautiful collection of electronica that explores ambience as thoroughly as it exudes the avant garde.
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The music of this album simply fascinates. At first, the glitchy veneer suggests an air of almost ominous experimentalism. But in peeling back the layers, we expose a delightful heart of dreamy ambience, a delicious counterpoint to the more exotic outer shell. No doubt this originates in the dual influences of the two artists whose music went into this album, but the fusion of the two styles dovetails elegantly. Folks who enjoy the more experimental or noisy side of music will feel right at home with this release. But likewise, Problem of Universals will appeal equally to lovers of old school ambience who want their music a bit more approachable. Quite a clever balance Fosel strikes – very well done indeed.
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In particular, we are struck by the diversity of the music in this album. Some pieces meander slowly through the sounds, inviting the listener to drift alongside. Others throb rhythmically amid subtle washes of sound, getting the blood pumping again. Still others wander through a desolate landscape of electroacoustic imagery that somehow still evokes a sense of melancholic charm. Literally something for everyone to be found in Problem of Universals.
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So it is with great pride that we unveil the latest release from Kurt Nimmo, another example of his particular genius with the art of sound composition. Highly recommended to all of our listeners.
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Note: those who are interested in C. Reider’s original Electret Quintet can find it at the following link:
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http://vuzhmusic.com/releases/electretquintet.html

I’ve just released my newest recording, compositions based on twenty-year-old tracks by both P B K and Vidna Obmana!
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Vidna Obmana is as close to a household name for ambient music as you can get, and he was gracious enough to not only let me transform his music from pretty calming ambient music into spiky / noisy / weird not-quite-ambient music, but he okayed its release for free on my netlabel!
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P B K is a highly regarded noise musician, he and I have worked together somewhat frequently over the years, most recently on the collaborative CD “Discorporate“. His music is a constant source of inspiration to experimental musicians worldwide.
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The two of them released a split tape in 1991 called “Fragment 3“. This new recording is a track-by-track deconstruction of each song, rendering something new with the raw material provided by these two incredible artists.
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With amazing artwork by Anna Guseva, and music by turns frightening and mesmerizing, this one is not to be missed by any lover of experimental noisy ambient music.
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artist: C. Reider
title: Fragment Three Re-Works
format: mp3
keywords: experimental, noiseambient, drone

Download the whole thing here
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http://www.vuzhmusic.com/releases/fragment.html

I just uploaded a track to SoundCloud from my 1998 collaboration with the Implicit Order. It’s a nice mix of noise & calming ambience… one of my favorite tracks from that project.

frtnth (c. reider & the implicit order) by vuzhmusic

This afternoon, I received a surprise email from someone I don’t know and had never up ’till now heard of, with the subject line “remixed your tracks”. This is what the email linked to:
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My downloadable tracks are released under a Creative Commons license which says, basically, that as long as you are not making money off of it, and give me credit, you can sample and appropriate anything I do to your heart’s jolly content. It’s just that this happens quite infrequently!
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The tracks by the New Mexico artist Fosel are really stupendous. The title of the work is “problem of universals: c. reider remixes“, it’s an atmospheric reworking of some tracks from the Electret Quintet blended with some ambient guitar noises from Long Defeat.
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Listen to them and/or download them and THEN listen to them here:
http://fosel.bandcamp.com/album/problem-of-universals-c-reider-remixes
http://fosel.bandcamp.com/album/problem-of-universals-c-reider-remixes
http://fosel.bandcamp.com/album/problem-of-universals-c-reider-remixes
http://fosel.bandcamp.com/album/problem-of-universals-c-reider-remixes
http://fosel.bandcamp.com/album/problem-of-universals-c-reider-remixes