Vuzh Music Blog

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.

The admirable Russian netlabel Rus Zud has released a new spooky ambient release on the Internet Archive called Time Anomaly. It is a collaboration between Earth Incubator, who lists himself as being from Antarctica, and Serbian artist Dichotomy Engine.
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The floating and grinding synth compositions on this release remind me of Jeff Greinke and Eduard Artemiev. Quite nice, but a bit short at 23 minutes long. I hope for more from these artists, but for now I’m enjoying this release.

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

What was the last music you heard that shocked you and made you think “This is the sound of the future!” ?

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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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

Last.FM has its flaws, but it’s been great for discovering new music. Here are a few wonderful gems I’ve found while looking for music that Last.FM’s algorithms have deduced to be “similar to” C. Reider, and “similar to” Drone Forest.
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An absolutely gorgeous 20 minute long bit of grey ambient bliss from Stray Ghost, called A House Of Gold And Oak was recently mentioned on Disquiet, and for good reason, this album is beyond good. (Last.FM link)
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Still Crescent (Myspace/Last.FM) and August Stars (MySpace/ Last.FM) are the same guy, Sébastien Wright , who creates some ridiculously beautiful droning ambient music. This stuff is really great… I wish I could point you to a freely downloadable album, but at least you can stream his music. It’s worth it.
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The eye-poppingly cool website of Erstlaub is appropriate given the high quality of his quietnoise drones. This guy knows how to let a drone develop from one interesting thing into another. Long live Erstlaub! (here’s his Last.FM link)
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