zymogen .net label

Reviews for this release

Crrrk! The Lezrod sets music to the tectonic plate movement.
Lezrod a.k.a. David Velez of Colombia has been around for quite a while. He released at Rain Music, Test Tube, Enough Records and Standard KLIK Music. But his career started at Zymogen Netlabel. His new album Genki has been released in two volumes: part one is published by the Italian label, part two can be downloaded at the Test Tube website. A clever trick because all participants double attention and listeners can consume the whole thing in handy portions instead of running 100 minutes of music en bloc. Moreover, Test Tube and Zymogen are pretty close to each other (both personnel and musical) so that cooperation makes sense. I’m going to review part one of Genki because I think that it’s a bit better than part two, slightly more coherent. Maybe it’s also because I like Zymogen better than Test Tube, dunno. Please check both volumes!

First song "Arqsoni" is starts with clean synthesizer-bleeps until a sublayer of hissing drones comes in. Warm crackling like sampled from an old vinyl-disc mixes with the twinkling sounds… image Kubrick’s clean white starship-interieur from 2001: A Space Odyssey covered with a serious layer of ancient dust. Rich. Second track "Domrich" zoomes-out a bit. The detailed microstructure of "Arqsoni" gets lost for the benefit of a slow pulsing, a rolling like on sea. Compressing effects introduce nice glitches. I like the song because of the steady bass-tones that build the backbone of the whole track and to whom all the tonal elements refer to. "Mu" afterwards comes off like a dub of "Arqsoni". Delayed noises, dirt laden field-recordings and synth-elements interfere, there is a certain, nearby cinematic feel of menace. The tonal synthesizer-texture David introduces at last reminds me of Zymogen label buddy d’incise.
My favourite track is "Am", or, let’s say, the second half of it. The songs starts with panning synthesizers and fragments of a women’s voice. A nice bass-line comes in, the initial elements fade and return alongside something like a reversed guitar-motive. Sounds a bit like Jan Jelinek’s Krautrock-excursions, very nice and warm, the recent Nole Plastique-record might also work for comparison. The same kind of crackling warmth can be found in "Digi4". The Lezrod mixes dub-inspired bass-sounds with beautiful synth-tones and a lot of subtle noises. There’s a hypnotic closeness about "Digi4" that’s present beneath the complex surface of a thousand cracks and crevices. According to the artwork Zymogen and Batailley chose for Genki, you can imagine a stream of magma, calmly flowing under a shell of cooled-off stone. Final track "Hojas" features some nice field-recordings and reverse guitars that give you a good fade-out.

The music of Lezrod has the microscopic claim to examine the textures of sound. His album Genki is an abstract mediation on music and sound in general, making use of psychoacoustic repetition and the offset and alienation of subtle field-recordings. Still there are enough ‘musical’ elements left to keep the listener attached, certain harmonies, little melodies, interesting textures than form in-between. Music that sounds like the ground beneath looks like, dark brown, particulate, massive, beautiful.
Rubored / 02 Aug 2007

Columbian artist David Velez aka Lezrod has released two extraordinary albums on Italian netlabel Zymogen and on Portugese netlabel Test Tube respectively. As you can guess Genki was released as a collaboration between both labels which makes sense in at least two ways: 1) Lezrod has released on both labels before and 2) 101 minutes of music is simply too much for a single release.

Musically David Velez stays true to his earlier releases and makes heavy use of field recordings resulting in very abstract and experimental tracks. However I am always surprised to discover some nice melodic elements which help listeners to follow Velez’ sound explorations. Actually I managed to listen to both volumes in one session. Also Velez doesn’t force listeners to pay attention to every micro sound within his tracks. There is time to reflect on sounds; don’t worry about missing a sound or even pattern, you will discover them the next time.

These two releases are big, really big. Lezrod’s best tracks so far.
Not So Relevant / 02 Jul 2007