About Mush Records

Artist Spotlight

Deru
Say Goodbye To Useless Press Release

Deru discusses the recording of his new Mush release Say Goodbye To Useless, as well as other projects that he has been up to as a member of the Track Team.

More Artist Spotlights

Up-Coming Shows
03-11-2010	Eliot Lipp	Charlotte, NC, US	The Forum
03-12-2010	Busdriver, Antimc	Perth, WA, AU	Amplifier Bar
03-12-2010	Daedelus	Santa Fe, NM, US	Corazon
03-13-2010	Busdriver, Antimc	Fremantle, WA, AU	Mojo's Fremantle
03-13-2010	Daedelus	Monterrey, MX	TBD
03-22-2010	Lymbyc Systym	Tokyo, JP	Warszawa Records
03-23-2010	Lymbyc Systym	Tokyo, JP	O-Nest Shibuya
03-25-2010	Lymbyc Systym	Tokyo, JP	Haretarasoranimamemalte
04-02-2010	Busdriver, Antimc	Denver, CO, US	Bluebird Theatre
04-03-2010	Busdriver, Antimc	Durango, CO, US	Strater Theatre
More Shows

News
03/2010 - Sibling Bands Feature Includes Lymbyc Systym
Lymbyc Systym have been included in a San Francisco Chronicle feature on siblings in bands along with 10 others including CocoRosie, Boards of Canada, The Fiery Furnaces, Why?, and Tegan & Sara.

03/2010 - Thavius Beck On Huskey Radio
Producer/MC Thavius Beck stopped by Los Angeles' Huskey Radio, an online hip-hop radio station and news site. The interview may get a bit controversial, according to the folks at Huskey, so check it out for yourself.

03/2010 - Open Mike Eagle Gets Fresh Daily
Open Mike Eagle has profiled by Impose Magazine's Blake Gillespie in their Fresh Daily section.

03/2010 - Head Like A Kite Featured Burrito Band
Qdoba Mexican Grill has assembled a bunch of music for a free audio player on their site. The project is called Our Sound and also features artists from Peter, Bjorn & John to DJ Shadow. The music will also be available in Qdoba stores.

03/2010 - Busdriver Supporting Rjd2
Busdriver (and trusty right-hand-road-man Antimc) will be hitting the road with Rjd2 once again. Rj is billing this as his final tour, and has tapped Bus to play the 10 west-coast shows with him. Also on the tour will be Rj's friend and band-mate Happy Chichester. For more information, check out the shows page.

03/2010 - Her Space Holiday On Broadway
Her Space Holiday's "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend" from The Young Machines can be heard on Broadway this Spring when it will be used as curtain call music for the Elton John produced play Next Fall. The show opens at the Helen Hayes Theatre on March 11.

02/2010 - Open Mike Eagle Profiled By WildStyle Mag
Open Mike Eagle has been profiled by German hip-hop webzine WildstyleMag. The questions flow both ways, and the interview veers into numerous tangents, making it a fun read.
More News

Recent Reviews

MH-268
Deru - Say Goodbye To Useless
Boomkat

Having previously released for iconic electronica labels like Neo Ouija, Ghostly International and Merck, Deru now arrives at Mush for the release of his third album. Say Goodbye To Useless captures the producer (real name Benjamin Wynn) at the height of his powers, mixing hip-hop toughness with some eerily evocative sound design atmospherics that lend the album a real sense of depth and emotional grounding. "I Would Like" heralds a great start, opening with a crackly old vocal recording, sung in French and bathed in echo. It's all a bit Caretaker, actually. There are more vocals carried over for companion piece "I Want" whose scratchy, pitched up samples are bound to come with Burial-goes-Galic associations. The beats take shape as a shuffling hip-hop number here though, laying down a sturdy backbeat thud. Further into the record, productions like "Walk" really add to the all-important atmosphere that hangs over the album, supplying melody and mood-setting ambient textures with deft evenhandedness. Outside his work as a solo artist, Wynn has built a career for himself as a composer and sound designer, penning scores for the Paris Opera Ballet Company and earning himself award nominations along the way. Say Goodbye To Useless calls upon this sort of experience and far transcends the album's grounding in popular forms, providing moments of real compositional merit - as exemplified by the stirring use of a wind section during "Fadeaway". Apparently, even Kanye West's a Deru fan, having posted the "Peanut Butter & Patience" video (it's no "Single Ladies" though, is it Kanye?) on his blog recently, and undoubtedly, the kind of expectation-shifting, genre-crossing sounds exhibited here reassert the strength of Deru's talents - hopefully introducing his music to a broader audience along the way. - Boomkat

MH-268
Deru - Say Goodbye To Useless
ISO50

I’ve seen Deru play a few shows with Tycho, he always gets a crowd going with what some people might call IDM but it can’t be you know why because girls dance to Deru and girls don’t dance to IDM. This is definitely for fans of older Lusine but with a bit more noise, damage and darkness. - ISO50

MH-268
Deru - Say Goodbye To Useless
The Milk Factory

Deru is the solo project of Los Angeles-based artist and sound designer Benjamin Wynn. Dealing largely with decaying electronic textures, fuelled by crisp hip-hop beats, his music is characterised by haunting melodies and a dense cinematic feel. His first missive, Pushing Air, came out on Neo Ouija six years ago, and was quickly followed by an EP and a second album, Trying To Remember (Merck), a year later. Since, despite a handful of remixes and compilation appearances, there has been pretty little coming out of Wynn’s den. It has to be said thought that he has been busy with the day job, which consist, amongst other things, in making music, including for animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which aired on Nickelodeon for three seasons.

MH-268
Deru - Say Goodbye To Useless
The Silent Ballet

Deru is one man, Los Angeles-based Benjamin Wynn, and his latest effort, Say Goodbye to Useless, proves to be a focused approach to the genre of electronica. For as sweeping as it is in scope, it remains wholly coherent and concentrated. The songs may range from moody to danceable, organic to digitized, aggressive to soft-spoken, intricate to minimalist, but underscoring it all is an element of consistency. The same voices show up in song after song, the rhythms follow familiar patterns, and the composer's confident presence is felt throughout. Listening to the album beginning to end is akin to going on a long road trip across the heart of a continent: the landscape changes drastically, but the trusty car's comforting familiarity is there to carry us from place to place.

I should admit that for the first few days of listening to the album, only a few moments really stood out. Given that I knew nothing of Deru and I didn't know what I was getting into, I took the thrilling early moments of the album as foretelling of a mood-driven work built around melancholic vocals in foreign tongues. Imagine my disappointment when track three, "Peanut Butter and Patience," rolled around, and melancholy is abandoned for what could easily be the soundtrack a movie about well-dressed gentlemen pulling capers on one another. Concerned that, perhaps, the initial moments were a fluke, I had to restrain myself from skipping hurriedly to the next track, and eventually the brazen rhythms began to demonstrate their appeal. Relieved, I thought to myself, "Damn, this is one solid groove." What really stands out here is Deru's careful employment of effects. It is all too easy when building electronic soundscapes to get lost in the delay and reverb, letting washes of sound do the heavy lifting while the composer does a lazy bit of point-and-click programming. This is not the case here. There is no shortage of long-tailed reverb stretching a single cymbal crash out for a few measures, certainly, but there are also moments where the space between a bass thump and a snare hit is left wide open, and, as only an experienced composer such as Wynn knows, that silence only compounds the power of the next. This concern for detailed work holds true, too, for his overall arrangements. In one track in particular, "Cottonmouth Lothario," a lead synth line is repeated, but with entirely different effects and therefore a contrasting inflection. The first time it hits, it functions predominantly as rhythm, sweeping coolly between staccato notes with a decent amount of portamento. The second time, however, the same line is drenched with delay, and, while the notes remain staccato, the delay runs one note into the next, resulting in a smoother, almost legato approach. It is subtle, but exquisite. As the album rolls along, it manages to strike a balance between the darker moods evoked in the earliest couple tracks and the flashier moments of "Peanut Butter" and beyond. Melancholy is not left behind in the slightest. Rather, it becomes one ingredient in a complex recipe, cutting through at times and lurking in the background at others. While some tracks ("Peanut Butter and Patience," "Hello," "Basically, Fuck You") lean heavily to the groove side of things, others ("I Would Like," "I Will," "Days, Then...") seethe with underlying angst. The aforementioned "Cottonmouth Lothario" oscillates between the two and in doing so functions microcosmically, capturing the entirety of the album within the confines of just over four minutes. In the end, I discovered that Deru's work benefits from certain environments. Listen to it on a bus during a morning commute, say, or at an office desk, and it suffers grey-scale plainness. Listen to it booming in a living room while one downs a few beers with friends, however - or better still, at a party with a dance floor - and it bursts into color, capturing the absurdity of conscious life and celebrating that absurdity through joyous lament. Its paradoxical nature mirrors that of life itself: meaningless, crude, base, and absolutely worth every second. - The Silent Ballet

Minimize

MH-267
Lymbyc Systym - Shutter Release
Cavendish Fixed Sterre

Instrumental, innovative and intrepid, sibling duo Lymbyc Systym returns to the airwaves this fall with their latest album, Shutter Release. The Tempe, Arizona, pair introduce fresh concepts that expand far beyond the constraints of genres or comparisons to similar acts. While not exactly electronic, yet not a traditional instrumental band, Jared and Mike Bell seek unadulterated originality on Shutter Release. Connections to bands like Ratatat and Broken Social Scene quickly break down as Lymbyc Systym set their own pace and present their own sound.

For more reviews, visit the detail page for the Release you are interested in.

Mush Radio
24/7 radio streaming of the Mush catalog
now playing:	Loading...

Latest Releases
MH-045 Deru Peanut Butter & Patience 01/26/2010	MH-266 Thavius Beck Dialogue 01/26/2010	MH-267 Lymbyc Systym Shutter Release 11/03/2009
More Releases

Upcoming Releases
MH-265 Qua Q&A 04/27/2010	MH-269 Open Mike Eagle Unapologetic Art Rap 05/11/2010	MH-270 Loden Buggy 07/06/2010
More Releases

Complimentary Album Download
	MH-223 Thavius Beck - Decomposition This complimentary download is a thank you for supporting our artists. Enter your email address and a download link will be sent to you. Feel free to spread the word about this give-away. but please DO NOT upload the album to your blog or any file sharing service.
	Enter Your Email:

Featured Video
Lymbyc Systym - Shutter Release Directed by: Anna Threlkel iPod Video Download
More Videos

Featured Complimentary Ringtone
Peanut Butter & Patience Deru - Say Goodbye To Useless
More Ringtones

Now Streaming