NEW PIECE featured on collaborative release on mexican label mandorla
NEW RELEASE on french label rainmusic
http://rainmusic.free.fr/catalog.htm
NEW RELEASE featuring photos put together in a book plus a 22 min piece
Show at the Annex, NYC
Show at the Red Room Baltimore
DataTransfer2 temporaryl avaliable at
OUT
photo from Data transfer2 release show at Monkeytown, Brooklyn
Show at the Rake festival
photo from gig at the tank. wednesday september 12th
photo from gig at share + visuals. sunday september 2nd 7 PM.
digi4 published on a compilation by the 12rec guys
new lp out
new piece included on a compilation
new lp out
REVIEWS
«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 / July 02, 2007
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.
tube'|055
Lezrod
Exploraciones sonoras de paisajes surreales y espacios infinitos
«Biosphere based his last work on the novel "De la Terre à la Lune", written by Jules Verne. He gave us the sounds of travelling into space, and the breathtaking silence of contemplating earth from the moon. Had David Velez, in his Lezrod disguise, inspired himself in the works of Jules Verne for this release, and I would say that he was showing us around the mighty submarine Nautilus, and then taking us in a guided journey through the deep sea.
Is the name "Submar" an abbreviation for Submarine? Only David will know for sure. But in this first piece, everything is dark. Sounds that could almost be labeled industrial group together and are splintered with samples of water moving. Almost no rhythm, apart from the waves of static and the flow and ebb of distant echoes of dark sounds. A gloomy landscape, with the comforting melancholy that only Lezrod can achieve.
The song "Asiv" really gives the listener the impression of being underwater. The bleeps seem sampled off a sonar, the static and electricity that run through all its 18 minutes duration could very well be the soft humming of the Nautilus' engine room, whose motors ran on an electric power source, as imagined by the brilliant Jules Verne.
Lezrod continues in the line of his previous releases for Test Tube and Zymogen. Except that his sound is getting thicker and more intense. A listener that knows his previous work will certainly guess who's behind the wheel here, but on this release, he no longer lets clicks'n'cuts have so much focus, preferring to bring into the light some field recordings, carefully controlled noise drones, static, slow broken rhythms that only start to make sense after a few listens, ambients (aquatic, I stress once again) that seem to flow like waves, and so many more layers of sound. Lezrod's sound is getting more difficult, but more rewarding in equal proportion.
The title says it all: sonic explorations of surreal landscapes and infinite spaces. This is the best description one could give.»
- Luís Marta
REVIEWS
«(...) Lezrod, j'aime bien. Ce nouvel ep ne déroge pas à la règle. Musicalement, c'est assez différent de ce qu'a pu déjà réaliser David Velez. Plus lourd dans les sonorités, légèrement moins mélodique (quoique), sûrement plus complexe aussi. Je ne décroche pas. C'est bon à entendre. Submar, premier extrait, laisse entrevoir à lui tout seul l'élégance de Lezrod. C'est sombre, mais assez poétique. Et je n'ai pas vu passer les huit minutes, comme quoi...
Le second morceau, Asiv, poursuit la virtuelle descente vers les abysses. A écouter...»
- LaFresto / November 08, 2006
i really liked that release from the first time i heard it. and the sounds were absolutely unrecognizable. (i usually can imagine how some music was made) but this first track was totally newsound to me. actually its just some noises and effects. but they all sit in their own places and make harmony. quality work and great sound trip. thanx again. (i dont review anything usually).
gultskra artikler, 10-11-2006
Listening to music is strange sometimes. While I was listening mostly to minimal house over the summer months I am listening to ambient and more experimental releases now. Is listening to music linked to the seasons? Anyone written a thesis about it already? Let me know. Anyway, this is the second release by Colombian artist David Velez on Portugese netlabel Test Tube. The correct title of this two track release is Exploraciones Sonoras De Paisajes Surreales Y Espacios. The sounds on these two recordings are rather dark. Field recordings, drones, bleeps and even rudimentary rhythm can be heard throughout the 26 minutes of both tracks. While this description may sound like as if there was no structure you will be surprised how well everything falls into place. Of course this is a very experimental release and people who mostly listen to mainstream radio probably won’t call this music at all, but I encourage everyone to listen to it and let their minds wander.
Free download from the label’s website, 244 kbps.
www.notsorelevant.com, November 11th, 2006
from zymogen.net
...the nominations of the 3rd Qwartz Electronic Music Awards were unveiled, and we're really proud to announce that three zymogen artists have been nominated for three different categories: Fripees by Ibakusha as Qwartz Track, Retorno a la Nada by Lezrod as Qwartz Research and Toys by Songraphie as Qwartz Discovery.
These nominations are awarded by the public so let's go to Qwartz site and vote for zymogen artists.
We need your support!
This is a video I did in collaboration with my great friend Andres Cortes who did the visuals as I did the audio
DISCOGRAPHY
Data Transfer (Zymogen 2006)
01 Jas [+ Darren McClure] ............
[6'24'']
02 Opitas [+ Fgmcvp]....................
[4'26'']
03 Remix1norm [+ Darren McClure]
[9'54'']
04 North Coast [+ Darren McClure]
[7'13'']
05 Masato [+ Darren McClure]........
[7'52'']
06 Ramute [+ Stephen Walter]........
[3'06'']
07 Final Dub [+ Gurdonark]............
[6'24'']
08 Nunca volvieron.........................
[8'32'']
RECORD NOTES
The average music savvy already knows that a great deal of the most interesting electronic music is coming out of latin american countries. With Mexico and Argentina at he first wave of experimentalists, we now have to include Colombia, because of artists like David Velez, aka Lezrod.
David started his jouney of micro-ambient electronica right here at Zymogen, with 'Retorno a la Nada', a mutant body of glitchy drones and jazz-inspired compositions. But Lezrod's music isn't static, it's always evolving and shapeshifting into something that completely mirrors the artist's complex personality. David is also a big music lover, of all kinds. So it's not surprising that eventually he would ask some of his friends, also music artists that David respects, to do something together.
'Data Transfer' is the result of a combined work led out by Lezrod and his friends, where chunks of music information were transfered electronically back and forth, between Lezrod's hometown Bogotá and other distant places like Darren McClure's Japanese home, Gurdonark's Texas prairie, Stephen's Ohio and Fgmcvp's Florida beaches, the latter being a personal friend of David from Colombia.
All music pieces were assembled by Lezrod and this party of artists that he admires. Darren McClure, one of David's recent musical discoveries, was responsible for the work on four out of the seven tracks that make this album.
'Data Transfer' is also Lezrod's most 'low profile' work to date. Maybe the fact that these weren't meant to be solo tracks, made him hide a bit from his sometimes brutal approaches to composition. Darren's collaboration is a perfect example of that. His microtonal walls of sound, completely dampen Lezrod's glitches, without making them disappear, taming them, taking control of the narrative. 'North Coast' and 'Masato' are personal favorites and possibly the best work these two artists had made until this day. Two delicate soundworks, built up from huge microstructures with complex rhythms of bleeps and glitches, bonding together into heavy and hazy waves of drones. I could listen to this all day and just leave my brain idling.
Stephen Walter and Gurdonark pieces are pretty different from McClure's ones. Walter's 'Ramute' is a short piece of drum'n'bass-like fuzzy beats with melodic and hypnotic tones glued on top. Gurdonark's 'Final Dub' has a chamber kind of ambience feel, with lots of noisy layers piled up and heavily delayed, Kingston flavored.
'Opitas', Lezrod's tribute to his colombian mate and old college friend Fgmcvp, is perhaps the most Lezrod-kind of track. It reminds me of other tracks he has made, namely the ones from 'Retorno a la Nada'. Not surprinsingly, because Fgmcvp is credited as David's mentor when it comes to music production.
David has compiled here a great selection of collaborative work that will be remembered and tresured for years to come. There aren't many artists with such relatively short careers making music with this quality and density. Zymogen can indeed be proud of putting out releases like this. And from this side, we can only be thankful for that.
Pedro Leitao
REVIEWS
Back in April the Italian Zymogen netlabel released the seven track epos Data Transfer, on which the Colombian artist Lezrod teamed up together with Darren McClure, Fgmcvp, Stephen Walter and Gurdonark in order to create a versatile patchwork of experimental tunes.
Jas: In the beginning the track reminds me of Takeshi Nakamuras Dozed Off (the horror movie like echo sequences), but then it evolves into shy harmonics trying to defeat the dark graveyard mood.
Opitas: Peaceful 9th chords and clicks and pops conflict rhythms like raindrops dripping from a roof top. A drizzle day in the city with reflections of streetlight in puddles.
Remix1norm: Edgy ringmodulations gradually shifting to a melodic sequence which causes confusion by slightly alterring its metrics before it slowly fades out.
North Coast: Darren McClures musical language is the dominating part here, with a characteristic combination of low frequency tones and almost inaudible beeping. A clicks and pops rhythm layer fades in and is followed by some sparse chords. Masato: Another cloudy night on the graveyard, bells drowning in echos combined with ear-grinding overtones creating a subtile tension.
Ramute: At first a conventional rhythm structure acompanied by friendly chords gives us a fuzzy feeling of familiarity. During the course of the track, however, the chords become more and more inpredictable leaving us again in a state of confusion
Final Dub: Eventually some predictable harmonics resolve the tension without falling apart again or being splintered by metrics shifts, albeit still surrounded by a noisy background, were released with a smile.
Lezrods Data Transfer experiment yielded impressing results: Occasional reminiscences of Minimalist Music suggest Lezrod being interested in wide ranges of music (aside from contemporary Electronica) and its diversity of moods makes "Data Transfer" one of the strongest releases of 2006 so far.
Olliver Wichmann / 22 Jul 2006
Data transfer is the result of the collaboration of Lezrod and a bunch of his musician friends. This collaboration has led to an incredible ambient canvas built with diluted and distant drones superposed on sweet layers of light noise. The whole sounds like a kind of chillout or meditation soundtrack for a noise fan however. The soundscapes are from time to time adorned with fairly high pitched glitch melodies which emphasize the zen sentiment I talked about before. The album finishes on a little faster pace with Ramute and Final Dub. Enjoy.
Sothzine / 01 May 2006
Un album/projet très intéressant. Les constructions sont subtiles, le son est soigné, et de chaque morceau se dégage une même impression de progression lente et organique, accidentée mais irrésistible.
Eyka love / 28 Apr 2006
This is exactly the kind of work I would expect from David Velez; a meticulously constructed and subtle arrangement of flowing electronic music. While this release maintains a much more "low profile" approach than his previous works, I believe that it is through this medium that the intricacies of David's unique fusion of sound composition and electronic music are fully realized. This is absolutely one of the best releases of electronic music I've heard this year...
Christofer McFall on Earlabs / 22 Apr 2006
schon seit einiger zeit liegt lezrod's neues release auf zymogen bei mir auf der festplatte. im zuge der vorbereitungen auf die kommende kreislauf.fm netaudiosendung über zymogen hat mir filippo dieses release schon mal rüber geschaufelt.
lezrod hat einige seiner freunde versammelt um mit ihnen gemeinsam auf eine reise zur klangforschung zu gehen. dabei herrausgekommen ist ein fulminantes abenteuer. data transfer ist ein konzeptalbum, geeignet für fast alle lebenslagen und begleitet uns auf so manche reise ins ich.
wunderbar was hier gezaubert wurde!
Kreislauf e-zine / 20 Apr 2006
Data Transfer is a fascinating musical project. It's great to hear how all input has been carefully molded into one organically sounding/feeling whole. I think tracks 3, 6 and 7 are my favorites but that's very personal of course. Fabian Moncadas (fgmcvp) presence in this project is very welcome and it's great to see how the tutor and his pupil slowly part eachother musically to head for their own directions. Lovely and strong net album. Thanks!
Cecil Harding on Earlabs / 19 Apr 2006
Lezrod, artista colombiano das electrónicas que dá pelo nome civil de David Velez, regressa com um terceiro disco, depois de "Retorno a La Nada", na Zymogen, e do mais recente "Seleccion Natural", na Test Tube. De volta à Zymogen, desta vez com "Data Transfer" (zym007), Lezrod partilha o cenário com os artistas com quem o audio destructionalist trocou ficheiros musicais durante algum tempo (daí o título "Data Transfer"), Fabian Moncada, aka fgmcvp (Colômbia), Darren McClure (Japão), Bob Gurdonark (Texas) e Stephen Walter (Ohio). O que nos oferecem Lezrod e amigos desta vez é um novo conjunto de composições mutantes na forma e conteúdo, complexas estruturas ritmicas e texturais baseadas em drones e glitch experimental, inusitadas construções electrónicas organizadas e montadas segundo as leis do cinema, imagens e sons em movimento. Notam-se as diferenças de concepção dos vários artistas, que resultam em sinergias positivas a favor da criação musical. A tónica da produção é posta na colaboração artística e o resultado é muito interessante de ouvir. Repetidamente.
Jazz e Arredores / 15 Apr 2006
Notable cooperación de talentos, en un album en el que se mezclan densos drones y microsonidos de forma muy coherente y ordenada. Una produción cálida, con "sabor" a valula y llena de pequeños matices. Un paso adelante sin duda en el trabajo de estos artistas, que aunque ya nos tienen acostumbrados a grandes releases con sus proyectos personales, esta mezcla se revela francamente interesante a la escucha.
Xesús on Earlabs / 14 Apr 2006
First is the summary of the previous episodes. If you have unfortunately miss the first Zymogen contribution of Lezrod "retorno a la nada", i have the regret to inform you simply have passed through one of the best release of 2005 (but it is not too late to check it). Then, here it is "Data Transfer", a netaudio release which opens, for the first time in the short history of the label, a second collaboration with an artist. You probably imagine a possible comparaison with the previous release, it will be a wrong way as Lezrod have chosen the delicate exercice of plural collaborations. Mainly with the homing device Darren McClure, Fgmcvp for whom David Velez (Lezrod) have done remixes, Stephen Walter or electronica artist Gurdonark, this "Data transfer" is very well entitled as the tracks seem so easily "transferable" for the artists working on, a real successful collaboration from the man of Bogotà with his guests, as a sort of enriching friendship. Then, of course, it is finally possible to have a special interest for one or another track ("jas" which opens the album, is perhaps the most emblematic), but we never feel this sort of step on interest we usually have in those productions.
Lezrod have called them "data"...or was it a "harmonic data" transfer ?
Last advice, please check it before next year...
Thierry Massard / 13 Apr 2006
MORSURE SOUFFLE 5 tracks electroacoustic/musique concrète album. click on the cover to download the full records in a .zip released by Test tube. cdr version on Mitenand. music under CC by-nc-nd, copy & share it, thanks
CENDRE ET POUDRE 5 tracks of organic electronica. (click on the cover to download the full records in a .zip) music under CC by-nc-nd, copy & share it, thanks
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