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

I’ve been pleased to come across a couple of reviews recently, the first from the inimitable David Nemeth of Acts of Silence blog, who reviewed C. Reider’s “Formerly Sine Drones“, the new release on the Modisti netlabel.
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In his review “Multiple Functions” (nice pun) he says:

As Marc Weidenbaum wrote about C. Reider last year in the Disquiet review of Steam Inspector (2009), Reider is a ”deeply curious (and curiosity-inducing) musician”. Maybe it’s this curiosity for both musician and listener that makes C. Reider such a daring and admired experimental sound artist. On this blog, I’ve reviewed several works by Reider from his collaboration with Desohill, Falling Into Disrepair (2010); his recent solo work, Owning Extinctions (2011); his Crook’d Finger remixes (2000); and the community remix of C. Reider’s work (2011). But even if you listen to his other recent releases: Inconstant (2008), Linguism (2008), and the Electric Quintet series (2008-2009), one would experience an artist who doesn’t retread the same tired experimental hooks that were successful in previous releases. It is always something new. There are hundreds of electronic artists who call themselves “experimental” or “Avant-Garde”, but in reality they just are continuing in some sort of post-Commodore electronic noise genre that they are comfortable in. Reider does not do that. He produces work that always seems outside his comfort zone — something all experimental artists should being do. For his listeners the only thing we can expect from a C. Reider release is that it will be different from the previous C. Reider release.
Even though my dogs did not like is latest release on Modisti, Formerly Sine Drones, my curiosity as well as that of Reider’s makes this record a great addition to the musician’s discography. More than just tones and sound manipulations, Reider takes an atypical and almost deviant exploration into electronic frequencies.
http://www.actsofsilence.com/album-review/multiple-functions/

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The Agier blog’s feature “Recent Music Heroes” reviewed the 2011 Vuzh Music re-release of 2000’s “Crook’d Finger vs. Harlan / Crook’d Finger vs. D. Rhythm:O“, saying:

C. Reider is a unsung hero of darkly brooding electronic music who has been involved in music for about two decades, being very prolific as solo artist (under his own name; Luster; Crook`d Finger), having loads of collaborations and split albums, and having participated in such collective as Drone Forest. He has worked as musical reviewer and headed up a label titled as Vuzh Music. However, the initial release of this remastered version was issued 11 years ago. Someone called as Finger (ha-ha) has re-worked the versions of such artists as Harlan and D. Rhythm:O, respectively. The first side of the album (or the first side of the cassette release initially) is a bit more joyous industrial-based appearance mixing it up with Latin breaks and heavily stomping cadences and riffs. The flip side of it, however, it will be revolving around the axis of ominously sounding industrial techno, profound dystopiac reverberations and murky dub progressions. For instance, if you are deeply get involved in music of Justin Broadrick`s projects or the similar kind, this album must be heard at least as well.
http://agier.blogspot.com/2011/06/crookd-finger-vs-harlan-vs-drhythmo.html

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A brief break in my school-induced blog silence to point to a review of the new freely downloadable release of my 2000 cassette release Crook’d Finger vs. Harlan / Crook’d Finger vs. D. Rhythm:O. The review appears on the Acts of Silence blog, reviewing netlabel music (and hooray for that!).
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It reads:

Before dubstep, there was a C. Reider remix and all was well. In listening to the Crook’d Finger remixes of Harlan and D.Rhythm:O, Reider destroys the concept of labeling music from way back in 2000. These nine tracks were released as a limited edition cassette with the artists each taking a side as Reider’s alias Crook’d Finger puts his remarkable remixing chops to the test. Versus truly defies any label as the tracks easily span several genres of electronic music, for example the remix of Harlan’s “Hence” (mp3) and the remix of D.Rythm:O’s “Slow Flow / Volt Spur” (mp3). I realize that this review might not be of much help in discerning whether you should download or not — you should by the way —, but I’ll let C. Reider have the last word:
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“The Crook’d Finger stuff is, without a doubt, the most approachable music I have ever done, and I always thought it could reach a wider audience. Maybe now that it’s available in such a free and open format, it can.”

A list of some of the stuff planned for (the first part of) 2011.
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• Promote the new Crook’d Finger release! It’s out now! It rules! Go HERE!
• School: Cad Inventor & Museum Studies this semester.
• Listen to more Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman & Keith Fullerton Whitman, because I am not as familiar with those artists as I would like to be.
• Listen to LOTS more netlabel music.
• Make beautiful objects.
• Re-release an album previously released on CDr in EXTREMELY limited quantities by a guy who collaborated with Muslimgauze, (details forthcoming in the next months)
• Finish the 20 year anniversary compilation (there’s still time to contribute if you’re a musician: go HERE for details)
• Maybe get that handheld recorder for site recordings?
• Finish the major release for C. Reider… consider the big collaborative project that may or may not go along with it. If the collaborative project is decided against, then I need to find some way to move Vuzh Music more into the realm of curated netlabel featuring many other artists and not just my music.
• Complete the re-master for the Unseelie Court & re-release that.
• Mix & master & release the Tarkatak collaboration (following up from 1998’s the Druser Pricid)
• Finish & release the cassette release that I have in the works. Take that cassette, when done, and TRADE with it.
• Consider the ‘Pulsa’ project idea. There are a couple of directions it could go in.
• Consider the follow-up Crook’d Finger that’s been moldering on the hard drive for years. Also consider the ‘compilation tracks’ release.

I’ll bet you thought C. Reider couldn’t groove.
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I guess I wouldn’t blame you… in his twenty years of recording music he’s put out a lot of conceptual experimental musique concréte, quietnoise proto-ambient and growling electronic beatfields.
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But, listen:
around the turn of the century, he quietly donned a superhero name “Crook’d Finger” and released a few recordings of pure thumping pop-techno bliss, replete with subtle humorous samples and musical references to his own backcatalog.
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The recordings garnered much acclaim, but have been unavailable for most of the decade.
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Vuzh Music is happy to re-release the first Crook’d Finger EP “AFT”.
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Originally released in a super special CDr edition (with white faux-fur covering!) in 1999!
Now available, free for all-comers.
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More soon!
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Also check out C. Reider on Last.FM, or just visit Vuzh Music for the netlabel’s fine roster of free music by C. Reider and friends.