Vuzh Music Blog

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

Posted by C. Reider

C. Reider has submitted a few tracks for some freely downloadable compilations:
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Gone in 60 Seconds— This is a collection of tracks, all of which are only one minute long. Brevity is good. I haven’t had a chance to play through all the tracks yet, but there are many good names, such as PBK, Pavonine, Big City Orchestra, ENE… I submitted a one minute long track by Drone Forest.
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No-R-Mal II — The follow up to the incredible compilation of a few years ago is longer and more incredible. This is SEVEN HOURS of underground goodness, right here. Burn this to an mp3 CDr and you’ve got enough underground goodness to last through an entire work-day. It could be argued that in the underground, there is a quantitative glut of musicians, but this compilation proves that while there is a high quantity, there is plenty of QUALITY out there too. I recommend this and its predecessor as perfect starters for the new fan of obscure music. I contributed an exclusive track called “Will Fall”. Many friends of mine, and artists that I respect populate this stellar comp.

Posted by C. Reider

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

Posted by C. Reider

Big enormous huge coding project is complete!
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The website is streamlined!
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Vuzh Music dot com
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I made the website 1000000000x more user friendly. In fact, you don’t even have to leave the front page if you don’t want to, you could suck up every free mp3 and order every product right there without going anywhere. It’s like… almost something that makes sense.
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I also added new upgraded downloads for Man-Hours and the Long Defeat… and made available (after a long absence) some things i did when i lost my mind and Harlan’s Collective Sounds.
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This is as good a reason as any to beef up your collection of Vuzh Music stuff:
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http://www.vuzhmusic.com

Posted by C. Reider

Hello all!
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Over the next little while I am going to be streamlining the Vuzh Music website. The intent is to make the site easier to use for those who don’t want to spend a lot of time navigating from page to page.
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You are looking at the first part of the changes. The old news page (link) had made itself irrelevant the moment I made this blog. It was harder to update than the blog, and so I procrastinated, and eventually fell so far behind that it’s embarrassing.
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From now, on, clicking on the ‘news’ link will take you to the ‘Vuzh Music News’ category of this WordPress blog. This category will contain the most easily digestible, and most important news items, such as announcements about major releases and so forth.
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There is much more to the Vuzh Music blog, of course, including thoughts, reviews of other music I find on the net, links to articles… and so on. But for now, the narrow focus of this blog category should serve well for delivering the most important news to visitors of this site.

Posted by C. Reider

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

Posted by C. Reider

Brand new track, a SoundCloud exclusive:
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Drone for Oil by vuzhmusic

Posted by C. Reider

Despite the Downturn: An Answer Album
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Marc Wiedenbaum of the incredible online magazine Disquiet invited me a couple of weeks ago to contribute to a compilation of new music. The compilation is a “non-verbal response” to an article written by Megan McArdle that was published in the May 2010 issue of the Atlantic (still on the racks as of today).
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The idea was to use the illustration by Jeremy Traum that accompanied McArdle’s article as a graphic score for a new piece of music. As Marc describes it:

There are at least two major traditions in the intermingling of visual art and music. One is when musicians pay homage to an existing artwork, as in Morton Feldman’s musical tribute to the Rothko Chapel, or more recently Ted Nash’s “Portrait in Seven Shades” (a Jazz at Lincoln Center commission based on works from the Museum of Modern Art by Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack, and others).
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The other is when musicians treat a graphic image as a score, an approach with a strong avant-garde lineage. Among the best examples is Christian Marclay’s “Graffiti Composition.” It involved setting up musical notation paper all around Berlin, and then — after the blank staffs had been scrawled on, layered with advertisements, and otherwise damaged — collecting them and selecting those most redolent with musical potential. The pages were later collected as a book and are used as scores by musicians.
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This project, Despite the Downturn, is a mix of those two traditions: it’s an homage to a work that wasn’t intended to be read as music, and yet the homage involves treating it as a proper score.

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I was honored to have been asked to contribute, intrigued by the artistic protest angle of the concept and inspired by the ‘graphic score’ by Traum. I contributed a track called “StaffGrabbing” which mangles some appropriated samples of solo piano and hip hop drumbeats.
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Download the compilation for free from the Internet Archive here:

Despite the Downturn: An Answer Album
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Please also check out Disquiet’s new article announcing the release:
http://disquiet.com/2010/05/03/despite-the-downturn/
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and his original article responding to the McArdle piece:
What, After All, Is the “Music Industry”?

Posted by C. Reider

Please listen to my new piece of music. I recorded it today!
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It’s completely, intentionally derivative (of Steve Reich) but I’m still really happy with how it turned out, and with the emotional / political impact of it!
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You know you want to listen to this, come on, the title alone should compel you!
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Socialism is Evil by vuzhmusic

Posted by C. Reider

Electret Quintet 5 Released today!
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I hope you’ll spend a little of what remains of this decade, and a lot of the new one with these sounds! My major project of the last two years is now complete and released, with the fifth and final part of the Electret Quintet seeing release on the last day of the Zeroes!
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For these five sets of five recordings each, I used a single analogue drumcomputer for all of the sounds. Here’s a track using only the Roland TR-606 from Electret Quintet 4:
3/29 r TR-606 by vuzhmusic

…and here’s one using only the Roland’s TB-303 from the Electret Quintet 5, just released today!
December24x TB-303 by vuzhmusic
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hm… wouldn’t that pair of tracks make a nice 12″?
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Check out the newest one, or download the whole bunch, it’s all free!

C. Reider – the Electret Quintet
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Posted by C. Reider