Don’t be deluded: MUX is not another moniker for the psycho-freak-rock band WON JAMES WON! This is St. Petersburg based experimental duo of club-electronic sorcerer and keyboardist Ed Telpook plus multi-instrumentalist and sound-producer Dan Smirnov (of KIRPICHI, hardcore-crossover band where he plays bass-guitar and sings). Launched in 1999, MUX is mostly home-studio project; though the duo occasionally performs live accompanied, as a rule, by their comrades on WON JAMES WON. Their music could be best described as sonic manipulations swinging between harsh industrial assaults and more gentle intellectual drones: perfect for visual installations or avant-garde theatrical varieties. MUX are members of the ZveZdaZ art movement.

RELEASES

MUX / The Second Confession (2004) / CD $13.00

EDX and DAN271, armed with analogue synthesizers, noise devices, various instruments, and computers, confess to a hatred of nauseating vermin who came from the seamy side of life and spread an infection of indifference and apathy. But here come the rescuers! Here is their electro-shock therapy for the brains wallowed in ignorance, a relief from palsy consonances. Twitching and cramping cadences scrape parasites off and inoculate for future invaders. Sounds like a summary of a Japanese anime? And it could well be! (8 tracks - 58 min.)

PRESS CLIPS

"Another great discovery from the St Petersburg scene. Using analogue synthesizers, assorted instruments and digital processing, this duo churns out sludgy, rhythmic tracks with scraping sounds and rusty textures that wouldn't sound out of place on a Mental Destruction album." – Mechanoise Labs (France) (May 2005).

"It turns out that R.A.I.G. is the label side of something called the ZveZdaZ collective, whose artists work with a bizarre brand of psychedelic, heavy post-industrial noise and outsider rock. Mux definitely lands more on the industrial noise side of this fence, but the grinding concrete electronica on The Second Confession also sprouts some weird rock tendrils in spots. Alot of this consists of sinister electronic death ambience layered over distorted, crumbling beats that coalesce from distorted glitches and heavy tribal-industrial percussion, and as we listen it more than once conjures images of Blade Runner style urban nightmares via the repetitive, undulating beats. Deeply submerged techno pulses throb from several miles away while theremins chant softly. At times it's like Lustmord/Troum style drone, ominous and threatening, drifting over slowly dying machinery. Totally hypnotic and nocturnal cyberpunk techno mutations. Like the other R.A.I.G. CDs we have reviewed in this weeks newsletter, The Second Confession is packaged in a super cool, unique oversized thick cardboard case with silkscreened, handassembled printing and full color cover art. It looks fucking killer, a truly underground document of dystopian DIY industrial crunch." – by Crucial Blast (USA) (June 2006).