Zuur - Artist Overview

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The great thing about growing old (Ed: disgracefully in your case) is that you finally reach a point where you couldn't give a toss about anything. At all. Most people know I have been an online irritant for a great many years, but there aren't many people who know exactly how long. I first became interested in internet music releasing in 1992, although I had been into the MOD scene for a couple of years before that but found it way too elite-ist for me. Howvere I did spend some considerable time (1994-1999) contributing hugely to that scene both with weekly reviews, usenet posts and although I was not as viscious as some reviewers before me, I did cause some considerable shucking and jiving with my angle on what their music was about. As you know I've sharpened the old poison stick considerably since then, but here's a guy who knew me back when. I used to know him as the MOD musician 'wOOd' and if you know anything about the early MOD scene, that name will be familiar, as will the name of his group at the time: Acid Demons.

wOOd was an 'old skool' MOD musician who would make his music the old fashioned MOD way, note by note into a 'tracker' Most of the really serious MOD musicians would NEVER have used loops - a rule I also found perfectly acceptable and it's that the gives MOD music (still, to this day) it's unique sound and voice. Since the scene imploded under its own inertia during the last few years of the 1990's, many of those same MOD musicians moved into the MP3 field where, I'm sad to say, many of them completely disappeared off the radars. Well pleasing though when wOOd turned up on SC in his new Zuur guise because while I've never liked straight ahead techno style electronica, I've always had a soft spot for the way that this Utrecht (thats Holland btw) based musician puts his stuff together... I even think I've got some of his old IT files hanging around somewhere, and that's really saying something. Something about Amsterdam that's for sure...

Anyway, any self respecting beephead should get to know this electronica artist whose specialty always is/was acccceeeeeeedddd, and mine's with acouple of lumps of LSD please. Wooahh man, the colours!! Nope, delving into this artists work is delving into a whole universe of numbers 101,202, 303 and all things bleepy and squeaky therein. As tracks like V Factor and Late Night Gin and Phonic adequately testify. Then there are tracks like I Like Acid, a Roland disciple to the core, with some of the squelshiest bass you are ever likely to hear - and a sharp eye to beautifying a very agressive, pushy track to make you go 'ooh' while you go 'aaah'. I'll readily admit that techno electronica never really got me hot, but what Zuur has always done for me is to make the genre listenable - AND he is sufficiently 'old school' to know what his audience needs. Mind you, God know's what they'd make of Gazpacho Longing (Take One) but it again shows this artists inventiveness with a very narrow range of sounds and textures. My only gripe is that none of this stuff is downloadable and given the sorry state of the Soundclick 'player' it doesn't give an audience much to go on. Besides, I also think the format its presented in is complicating matters because I KNOW for a fact that Lars (aka wOOd') has a thing about production and I know the tracks sound better than the player is portraying. Nonethless if acccceeed is your style and bleeps, whizzes and boings your bedfellows, then you really should meet Zuur. Zuur by the way being Dutch for acid, now ain't that a thing...?

Old skool electronica with a deft melodic edge.

Recommended for Propellorheads (you know who you are!).