Vuzh Music Blog

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.

John Gore’s ‘kirchenkampf’ project has long been known and admired by me for producing consistent, high-quality conceptual electronic space music. The characteristic ‘kirchenkampf’ release draws on influences from early electronic pioneers such as Subotnik, Parmegiani, the Barrons and Tangerine Dream, composing vast experimental sound-paintings with a strong central theme. His releases often follow a story structure hinted by the song titles and fleshed out with abstract, yet evocative electronic sounds. He is in top form on the new ‘kirchenkampf’ release “Dark Planet”
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The CD opens quietly with a long drifting drone titled “In Transit”, suggesting an awakening ship coasting through open space, and by the second track “Homesick”, a human element is introduced suggesting a deep melancholy in the crew after a long, cold voyage.
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The mood changes considerably on the title track. It seems that they’ve drifted into the orbit of an extraordinary planet, one that demands to be explored. The remainder of the CD explores the planet’s mysterious and frightening geography, its hungry caverns, its hissing fumaroles, its monoliths and volcanoes, “Terrorform” finally suggesting that they are not alone in this world. Serpentine figures lash out of the fog, etching curlicues in the air. As the story resolves, Gore describes, “The moon rises and bathes the planet with reflected light. Now they sit and wait for the first sunrise.”
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Another accomplished release from this venerable artist. I highly recommend it.
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It is available through Cohort Records as a physical CD, or a download.

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

Zondagmorgen’s “La Fin du Monde” is a free netlabel release from Just Not Normal. It is perfect music for, indeed, a Sunday morning, especially a chilly Autumn Sunday morning.
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Its stretched out repeating, shoegazer-inflected musical theme sets a melancholy tone offset by chilly blurred percussion noises that hint at a ‘groove’ but never quite get into one. Later there is further dissolution into a long, refrigerated drone, worthy of comparison to Drone Forest, if I do say so myself.
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Good stuff!

I had a chance to meet the underground musician Gurdonark in person last weekend. Here’s a photo of us hanging out at night in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado!
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Gurdonark, in case you’ve forgotten, was a contributor to the popular Vuzh Music ambient release by C. Reider and Friends Long Defeat Variations.
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You should also check out his really great solo release “Seven Virtues“, which I reviewed on this blog in January.

I’ve just found a few recordings by an interesting underground artist named Tiago Morgado. He runs the netlabel XS Records from his homebase in Portugal.
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His release 363 features some long avant-garde flavoured improvisations, with spacey analogue synth treatments burbling and subdued percussive elements in the background.
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The far more frantic Algorithmic Chaos EP, released under the alias DNP X-Citer, features angular compositions of viola phrases paired with with abstract skittering percussion and electronic noises pointing to a clear lineage with Autechre’s more complex work. It’s worth a listen.
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The milestone 4 CD-length compilation of music from netlabel underground artists put together by the Just Not Normal netlabel is now available for free download. It’s HUGE in every way. It promises to be an extremely useful introduction to a large amount of unknown artists.
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I appear on CD#3 with an exclusive track called “Captcha upgrade stickyglands“, which samples from various captcha scripts found around the internet.
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Also on CD#3 are a few friends and colleagues, such as Gurdonark and Mystified, who both appear on Long Defeat Variations
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I encourage you to download No-R-Mal, the fiftieth release on the Just Not Normal netlabel.

a.k.a. reviews.
Here’s some experimental sound stuff I’ve found around the internet that I enjoyed, and you can too.
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Dexp Lab – Sectors LP … Retro-futurist ambiance that frequently veers into dissonant noise-ambient sound clusters and occasionally settles into a groove that hints at head nod territory. For me, the best music merely ‘hints’ rather than ’says’. Like this a lot.
Free. 320 / VBR / OGG. Rus Zud netlabel.
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Pavonine – Pavonine … Soft industrial drone work, reminiscent, to me, of the Hafler Trio’s quieter music, but more explicitly ‘ambient’. Very atmospheric and admirably restrained. “Rassamblement des choses qui portent malheur” has a subdued musical theme that is so understated and melancholy that it could be heartbreaking under the right circumstances. Completely lovely.
Free. 320 kbps mp3. Webbed Hand Records
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Hannah M.G. Shapero (Altocumulus) – My Name is Marietta Cashman … consisting of recordings from the late 1960s of a teenage girl experimenting with the Buchla 100 modular synthesizer. From the descriptive text: “The sounds on this recording, unheard for 40 years, are a compilation of assorted electronic effects which were thrown together without much planning, rather as a storehouse than as a finished piece. They date from 1968 and 1969. The modern aesthetic of patchwork and accidental meaning, which was only at its beginning in 1968, has made this into “listenable” material.” I doubt I could make a better description than that, you will either like that or not. For me it’s pretty great.
Free. 320kbps mp3. Just Not Normal netlabel.

I thought I’d pass along a recommendation of an underground recording I’ve just enjoyed. Olifaunt’s newest album “Three Crows Become Four” (love that title!) is an autumnal set of churning bass drones, reminiscent of Crib (wow, Crib is important enough that it has a Wikipedia entry! If only I were so important! Alas I’m just not “notable”)… also recalling prime Maeror Tri.
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I reckon this project will find its way onto a label like Kranky or Infraction sooner than later, (definitely sooner than Drone Forest) so go check them out now and you can say you were there before the poseurs!
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Olifaunt has given this album to the world for free, at the Internet Archive (link), and/or at Last.FM (link).

I’ve just listened to a netlabel release I’d like to recommend.
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Hedningarna is a band I’d previously never heard of, that performs Scandinavian folk music on instruments such as hurdy-gurdy, Swedish bagpipes, lute, fiddle and several custom instruments.
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DJ Nikto has taken their recordings and run loops through delays, reverbs, digital smears, stuttering pauses and filter sweeps. Simple enough in concept, but the whole is very effective, it reminds me a lot in spirit and execution of some of the more ambient releases by the hallowed Muslimgauze.
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The album is available for free from the venerable, admired Russian netlabel Top 40. There are streaming and downloading options at the link below.
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DJ Nikto remixes Hedningarna