Vuzh Music Blog » mystified

More best of 2009

C. Reider — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:37:40 +0000

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!

Favorite Net Releases 2009.

C. Reider — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:39:52 +0000

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.

Mystified – Collusion

C. Reider — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:13:33 +0000

One of my favorite releases of the year has been put out by Mystified on the Clinical Archives netlabel.
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Mystified’s “Collusion” collects the work of three of my friends and peers into one densely packed work of abstract quietnoise. I could be subjected to criticism for being biased in this recommendation, because my much admired friends and collaborators Phillip from PBK and Anthony from the Implicit Order, and Patrick from Kwalijk (also known as Desohll, with whom I collaborated on a recent release of darkambient) have contributed some remixes of music by my equally admired friend Thomas from Mystified for this release. Given the participants, one could almost expect nothing but the finest of challenging soundwork that exists on the quiet and calming edge of noise, that weird hybrid area that has been described elsewhere as “noiseambient”. Perhaps I am biased, or perhaps I have managed to make the acquaintances of several extremely talented composers on the outskirts of musical exploration. I tend to think the latter is more the case.
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On “Collusion” you will find an admirably cohesive set of gritty, yet calming collection of music that treads the border between ambient music, with its calming background qualities, and noise music with it’s upfront challenging qualities.
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Also contributing some remixes to this collection is KR-Ohm whom I don’t know personally, but who holds their own in very respectable company. For that she/he gains my respect.
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It’s nearly a perfect music, this.
I could not recommend it more.
http://www.archive.org/details/ca308_m

Music recommendations

C. Reider — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:08:39 +0000

A few quick nods to some things I’ve heard around the ‘net lately:
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C.P. McDill – Introspection
This venerable underground artist has put out a lot of good work, this one is striking for its character. This Eno-esque ambient piece presents a continuously rolling tone cloud which constantly shifts between tension and release and often drifting into really serious dissonance. The choices of tones occasionally seems completely random, and at others it’s more composed. The piece seems to sit very uneasily with itself, and that makes listening to it a very curious and captivating experience… not something one can always say about an explicitly ambient work.
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Zieltogend – Myst II
More deep, dark drones from the man behind Desohll and Norss. This particular piece remixes some works by Mystified. I really love this kind of thing, when one underground artist pays tribute to another by remixing, especially in this case where the artist clearly has a love for the work he is appropriating. This guy’s drones are quality stuff.
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Shoeb Ahmad – Piano Music
Originally released as a 3″ CD that appears to now be sold out, you can still listen to this very enjoyable bunch of experimental piano music through Last.FM, so I’ve linked to the release’s page at that site. Ahmad runs his piano through Max/MSP, yielding a mixed sound palette, sometimes stark and pretty sound fields to accompany his minimalist playing, and at other times, the piano is seemingly lost in milky resonant distortion. I’d like to see Markus Brösel move in this kind of direction.

Pulse Ringer Pieces

C. Reider — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:23:00 +0000

I’ve just listened through Mystified‘s new 12″ vinyl release “Pulse Ringer Pieces”, and I’m really impressed with my friend Thomas Park’s inspiring and unique take on ambient music.
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The music drifts along with undulating textures of sounds and tones, sometimes with jittery clattering machine rhythms, sometimes without… each song patiently presenting its set of buzzes, chimes, hisses and pings each one in its perfect place. Mystified really portrays a sense of place with these tracks, the sounds really get my imagination going.
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I’m very envious and admiring of the way Thomas can put together strange noises and insistent rhythms and make the whole cohesive and ambient and beautiful.
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The very promising new label Droehnhaus has put out this vinyl record, and I’ve got to hand it to them, they really picked a beautiful set of music, and they put it out with real style. The record was pressed on lovely transparent dark blue vinyl with an enigmatic blue-black cover art.
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I very heartily recommend picking up a copy…
The world needs more strange, underground music on vinyl.
I know from having put out my own record just how much more special the music is on the format it deserves.
Droehnhaus carries the record for Europe, and if you’re in the U.S. you can get a copy direct from the band by emailing autocad13 (at ) hotmail (dot) com