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ZOMBIENT MUSIC
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All music composed and played by Gabor Csupo
Csaba Varga: additional keyboards
THE BLUE DIVIDE MAGAZINE
Issue 2
Review by Kiran AdithamSparse signals from analog alleyways, distant drums, and sinister strings come together to paint a portrait of an abandoned landscape. Zombient Music is comprised of 11 bizarre instrumental lessons in lo-fi horror music. At times, the record sounds like zombies are toying with the instruments themselves. Off-time drums, and eerie bass underlie the moans and groans from a close location, slowly creeping up into xylophone noise in "Virgin Mary". This record, in ways, reminds me of just how dark dark ambient music can get. Csupo takes the listener to the toxic waste site where the zombies arise and leaves them for dead.
Dead Voices On Air mixed with a Goblin score can be the best way to detail many of the noises erupting from the record. All in all, Zombient Music is not a bad effort. One has to be in the specific mood to give it a spin, but after a few listens, I wouldn't be surprised if this music really would wake the dead.
FEBRUARY 1998
Special Report
inside out Experimental & New MusicGabor Csupo-Television personality
If you have perched before a faintly glowing television at any point over the past decade, chances are you have seen the work of Gabor Csupo. Co-founder of the animation empire Klasky Csupo, Inc., he has helped bring shows like The Simpsons, Duckman, Rugrats, and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters into the radiation-tanned lives of couch potatoes everywhere. However, also evolving under his direction over the past four years without as much commercial embrace are his record labels Tone casualties and its sister Casual Tonalities.
This lack of mainstream recognition doesn't worry Csupo, considering that the mission for each level is to promote musicians and artists whose creative sphere is purposely outside of the feeding environment of major lave A&R sharks. While Casual Tonalities primarily deals with more alternative rock acts like Japanese strange-punks the Pugs, Tone Casualties favors electronic, experimental and odd music, like that of Paul Schutze. Speaking about the latter, more yin half of his recording enterprise, Csupo offers, "This is not a mainstream kind of money-making business. It is more like the appreciation of art, and I believe that this type of music will hopefully grow into the genre of new classical music will hopefully grow into the genre of new classical music by the year 2000."
Csupo's involvement with his record companies requires more than just musing over possible lineups and receiving "Executive Producer" billing on all of the labels' releases. His influence extends to all aspects of production, from signing artists and marketing all the way down to expressing opinions on CD art design. "Yeah, I'm a little bit of a control freak," he explains, laughing, "But I didn't do this to make money, so I at least want to satisfy my own personal tastes."
Those tastes were ultimately realized in 1994 with the release of his own ambient compositions, Zombient Music. While he does not consider his principal calling to be a musician, the desire to compose is in his blood. "I just totally go after my instincts. I am not absolutely worried if [my music] is constructionally correct," Csupo says. The material on Zombient Music harks back to the synthesizer constructs of Art o Noise, but with a gritty, ark twist. Tracks like "Government" and Aragon's Army" are the most driving, with bleak undertones of paranoia and distrust oozing through the composition like gray, viscous lymph.
While Csupo felt that the disc was successful, it might take a while before more of his material is available. He is regarded as a genius in the realm of animation and television, but he struggles like every other working stiff with juggling a career and other creative outlets. Csupo confides, "I just need to relax and try to get away from here, because it is so hard for me to work so hard during the day in the film industry stuff and then go home and try to click away." Until he can get back into the recording studio, listeners will just have to be satisfied with exploring the range of experimental musicians that consider tone Casualties and Casual Tonalities their home.
Michael Woodring
"By day, he is chairman and co-founder of Klasky Csupo, Inc., one of the coolest animation studios around, with successes including The Simpsons, Rugrats, Duckman, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and Santo Bugito. By night, Gabor Csupo is , well, something else entirely. The man who left Hungary for political reasons in 1975 - abandoning all possessions except 500 record albums - has released a quirky CD entitled Zombient Music on his own Tone Casualties label. This is a series of instrumentals combining bachelor pad music and a low-budget monster flick soundtrack - cocktail hour of the living dead, if you will. Worth trying once."
MUSIC CONNECTION
