Retrospective: Revisiting gaop & Haggari Nakashe's Pictures of Gold and Terror (2006)

~20 Years of RZRecords, a Retrospective

Revisiting Haggari Nakashe & gaop's Pictures of Gold and Terror (2006)

45 tracks of noise rock, grindcore, free jazz, and Japanoise (inspired) madness, and what twenty years did (and didn’t) change

Pictures of Gold and Terror

In the mid-2000s, the underground DIY scene was a wild west of file-sharing and CD-R trades. Blogs were the gatekeepers, forums were the community, and “going viral” meant someone posted your album on a Blogspot page that got 400 hits or mentioned you on Myspace. In the middle of this productive chaos, an unlikely partnership formed between Haggari Nakashe, a Canadian-Japanese artist who at the time had been quietly terrorizing local noise shows in Montreal and Osaka simultaneously, and gaop, a Eurasian multi-instrumental experimentalist. Their 2006 collaborative effort, Pictures of Gold and Terror, remains one of the most polarizing and fascinating relics of that era’s extreme music underground, a record that fused jazz improvisation, noise rock aggression, Japanoise abstraction, and grindcore brutality into something that carelessly defied every category it borrowed from.

Twenty years later, it’s worth asking: what does it mean that this album still exists, still circulates, and still sounds like its own unique thing? And what does it mean that gaop and Haggari Nakashe are still at it?

The 45-Track Gauntlet: DIY Grindcore Meets Jazz Abstraction

Pictures of Gold and Terror is an exercise in hyper-compression. It features a staggering 45 tracks, most of which clock in at under a minute. The artists famously describeג it as “extreme music for people with a short attention span”, a statement that feels almost eerily prophetic in today’s era of algorithmic playlists and bite-sized content, but was purely an avant-garde provocation back in ‘06.

The genre DNA here is now-all-too-familiar, although at the time some still considered it genuinely unusual. Grindcore provides the blast-beat skeleton; noise rock provides the abrasive muscle; free jazz supplies the improvisational nervous system; and noise runs underneath everything like a low-level electrical hum that occasionally surges into the foreground and shorts the whole circuit. It’s a combination that had precedent: John Zorn’s Naked City had been doing something adjacent since the late 80s, colliding jazz harmony with hardcore aggression and noise in short, violent bursts, but gaop and Haggari Nakashe pushed the formula into weirder, more playful territory than Zorn’s downtown-NY seriousness typically allowed.

RZRecords was itself a product of that specific cultural moment: at the time it just shifted from a one-person operation run out of a cluttered apartment into a duo doing the same out of two homes, months before adding a third friend to the mix to handle things more professionally, but then still pressing CD-Rs in batches of 50, stuffing them into hand-stamped envelopes, and mailing them to strangers who’d traded email and snail mail addresses on message boards. At its peak it released something like 30 albums in two years, most of which vanished without a trace. Pictures of Gold and Terror was the exception, the one that kept getting rediscovered, passed around, re-uploaded after link rot swallowed the original sites and files.

Twenty years on, RZRecords has transformed in the way that only the most stubborn DIY labels can: it hasn’t scaled up so much as it’s formalized its own weirdness. The CD-Rs are mostly gone, replaced by streaming platforms, Bandcamp pages and occasional limited releases. But the ethos, release anything interesting, charge almost nothing, make no concessions to accessibility, remains intact. In an era when “DIY” has been co-opted as an aesthetic by labels with real marketing budgets, RZRecords' commitment to genuine obscurity feels less like a limitation and more like a principled stance.

The track list still reads like a fever dream, a scrambled broadcast from a parallel dimension where half-melted melodies argue with ghosts of forgotten genres, and every title feels like an inside joke whispered by a synth that remembers your nightmares:

“Skin a Friend To Get Free Stuffing”
“Wall Volcano Wallkanoo”
“A Jaw As Big As a Garage”
"Please Give Me a Second Helping of Rocks"
"Sausages Made of Hands"
"Starving in the Name of Porn"

The “Hummable” Paradox: Noise Music That Gets Stuck in Your Head

Despite its roots in powerviolence, noise drones, and avant-garde grindcore, Pictures of Gold and Terror has a bizarre secret: it’s often surprisingly melodic. The Bandcamp description still claims 90% of the tracks are “hummable,” and while that sounds like a joke, there is a real grain of truth to it.

The album employs a relentless bait-and-switch tactic. A track might open with a “cute” or pleasant synth melody or a funky, Haggari's slapped bass guitar riff, a gaop OG Casio keyboard signature,  only to be violently interrupted by a blast of noise or a jagged grindcore transition. The result is something like “kawaii-noise” meets “scum-punk”: a sonic prank that keeps the listener in a constant state of brain whiplash.

This tension between melody and destruction had been explored before, but rarely with this particular flavour. Melt-Banana had been threading pop hooks through noise-punk shrapnel since the mid-90s. Fantômas, Mike Patton’s film-score-meets-grindcore project, whose 2001 self-titled debut carved up genre in similar short-burst fashion, was doing something structurally related, though with a cinematic grandeur that Pictures of Gold and Terror deliberately refuses. Closer in spirit was perhaps the work of Ruins, the Japanese duo who spent the 90s running progressive rock structures through hardcore filters with a similarly absurdist sensibility. What gaop and Haggari Nakashe added to this lineage was the jazz element: not jazz as decoration, but free-jazz as infrastructure, the improvisational logic that determined when a melody was allowed to breathe and when it would be ambushed.

“Extreme music for people with a short attention span.” — Haggari Nakashe & gaop on Pictures of Gold and Terror

What’s striking, revisiting this in 2026, is how much the broader culture has unconsciously caught up to this structure without acknowledging it. The internet trained an entire generation to process radical tonal shifts in seconds, the ironic pivot, the bait-and-switch thumbnail, the meme that starts cute and ends in chaos. Pictures of Gold and Terror was doing this as deliberate artistic provocation. Whether that makes it ahead of its time or simply unlucky, arriving just a tiny bit before the world had the language to appreciate it, probably depends on how generous you’re feeling.

Haggari Nakashe & gaop, never seemed particularly interested in being vindicated. their output since 2006 has continued along the same perverse trajectory: melodic ideas deployed as traps, accessibility used as a weapon. If anything, their recent work has doubled down on the free-jazz mixed into noise punk rock playfulness, leaning further into the “cartoony” end while keeping the trapdoor of extreme noise always one bar away.

The Noise and Jazz-Noise Lineage: Where Pictures of Gold and Terror Fits

The album’s DNA is deeply tied to the Japanoise and Japanese Noise Rock schools. With Haggari Nakashe’s background, the influence of bands like The Boredoms, Melt-Banana, and Hanatarash is undeniable, but so is a broader tradition of jazz-noise collision that was particularly fertile in the 90s and early 2000s.

Structure. Like the “ADHD” arrangements of Osaka’s noise scene, the songs don’t develop; they explode and disappear. This is a direct inheritance from artists like Masonna and Solmania, who treated duration itself as a form of aggression, why spend four minutes on something you can detonate in thirty seconds?

The Jazz Thread. The free-jazz influence puts the album in conversation with a specific 90s/00s lineage of artists who refused to keep jazz and noise in separate rooms. Zu, the Italian noise-jazz trio who emerged in the late 90s, were building a similar bridge, saxophone brutalism colliding with post-hardcore rhythms. US Maple were doing something adjacent from a more art-rock angle, using jazz’s rhythmic displacement to make rock music feel physically unstable. Borbetomagus had been fusing free jazz with pure noise even earlier, back in the 80s, but their influence was particularly felt in the 90s underground that gaop and Haggari Nakashe were clearly absorbing. All of these artists shared an instinct: that jazz’s improvisational logic and grindcore’s physical aggression were not opposites but natural co-conspirators.

The Slap. The use of the bass as a percussive, almost cartoony lead instrument adds a layer of surrealism rarely found in Western grindcore. This is where the jazz influence becomes most audible, the bass behaving less like a rhythm instrument and more like a soloist with a chaotic, bebop-inflected disregard for where the beat is supposed to land. This is years and years before they add woodwinds into their arsenal.

Haggari Nakashe’s own evolution over the two decades since is worth noting here. Where gaop has remained relatively prolific and consistent, Nakashe went through a long period of near-silence in the early 2010s, moving back to Japan, working outside music entirely, before re-emerging around 2017 with a series of solo noise and drone releases that felt like a direct continuation of Pictures of Gold and Terror’s most unhinged moments, as though the intervening decade had been compressed and fired out all at once. The collaboration between them resumed quietly, without announcement, in the way that real creative partnerships tend to: not with a reunion press release, but with a new file appearing in a shared folder.

The Japanoise lineage itself has shifted in the world’s perception. What was once genuinely underground, physically inaccessible, requiring real effort to find, is now a popular genre, few search terms away. That democratization is mostly good, and yet something about the friction of the original discovery mattered. The people who found extreme music, or Pictures of Gold and Terror in 2006 found it through effort. The people who find it now find it through an algorithm serving up “if you liked this, try…” It’s the same album. It hits differently.

A Legacy of the Weird: What 20 Years of RZRecords Tells Us About DIY Experimental Music

Looking back twenty years later, Pictures of Gold and Terror stands as a testament to the longevity of niche creative bonds, and unexpected  friendships, and to the specific kind of stubbornness required to make genuinely uncommercial art across three continents for two decades.

What Hasn’t Changed

• The music itself. Its refusal to be palatable.
• The gaop & Haggari Nakashe collaboration, still active.
• RZRecords' commitment to releasing music that ignores rules and discoverability.
• The album’s ability to sound abrasive, funny, and genuinely strange.

What Has Changed

• The CD-R economy, blogs, and forums, they're all gone.
• The underground is bigger, more visible, easily accessible, harder to define.
• Jazz-noise-grindcore is now taught in music schools.
• Streaming hosts the album but algorithmically buries it, often hoping you'd pay to make it visible.

Imagine if the internet had no algorithm, no recommendations, no safety net, just a billion random pages built by strangers with too much free time and zero design training. That was the 00s web. Instead of apps, you had Geocities shrines: personal websites so aggressively ugly they looped back around to beautiful, plastered with animated flames, visitor counters, and MIDI files that ambushed your speakers the second a page loaded. No mute button. No skip. Just whatever song some stranger decided you needed to hear.

Finding music like Pictures of Gold and Terror meant someone went genuinely hunting for it, digging through dead forum threads, copy-pasting sketchy URLs, watching a ZIP file unpack at a speed so slow you could make a sandwich between each percentage point. And if someone in your house picked up the phone mid-download, it killed your connection entirely. No autosave. Start over. The chaos wasn't a bug, it was the whole experience, and somehow that made the payoff feel enormous.

Today's internet is frictionless by design: everything is findable, streamable, and served to you based on what you already like. That's genuinely useful. But something got lost when discovery stopped feeling like discovery. When every niche got a subreddit, every obscure genre got a Spotify playlist, and every weird corner of the web got smoothed into a content category. The old internet was a place you could genuinely and easily get lost in, and losing yourself in it, stumbling onto something strange and perfect and completely unasked for, felt like finding a secret that the algorithm will never be able to fake.

Extreme music was out there, sure, this was way after the initial black metal waves, Japanese punk becoming harsh noise and decades after classical composers and jazz experimentalist went chaotic, all in existence, in the back racks of record stores brave enough to stock it, and scattered across the early internet in forgotten forum threads and sketchy ZIP files, lurking on file-sharing sites. But finding it still meant looking for it: following a thread, trusting a stranger's recommendation, disappearing down a rabbit hole with no algorithm to catch you. The discovery was part of the point.

The deeper question Pictures of Gold and Terror poses in 2026 is whether “extreme” still means anything at all. Loudness is ubiquitous. Weirdness has been aestheticized into a brand. Short attention spans have been validated by an entire industrial complex. And yet this album still manages to feel abrasive and strange and funny in a way that most calculated “weird” music doesn’t, because it was made by two people who genuinely didn’t care whether it landed, for a label that never expected it to travel, in a moment when none of the current incentive structures existed to reward legibility.

For those who missed it in 2006, Pictures of Gold and Terror is a time capsule of a moment when “extreme” didn’t just mean loud, it meant weird, funny, and unexpectedly catchy, with a jazz bassline running underneath the wreckage. For those returning to it now, it’s something rarer: proof that the things made without ambition sometimes outlast everything made with it.

In that sense, Pictures of Gold and Terror is less an album than a behavioral experiment conducted on anyone foolish enough to press play. It is music for people who think normal song structure is a polite suggestion, for listeners who enjoy being emotionally ambushed by a bassline, and for archivists of the absurd who still believe a record can be both comically overstuffed and genuinely principled. Twenty years on, it remains gloriously resistant to explanation: too melodic to dismiss as pure chaos, too chaotic to be mistaken for melody, and too self-aware to ever fully surrender to either category. It is the rare work that can sound like a joke and a manifesto at the same time, which is probably why it survives, not because it makes sense, but because it refuses to stop making trouble.

And maybe that is the real legacy of RZRecords: a catalog built like a dare, maintained like a habit, and remembered like a prank that accidentally became an institution. In a world where every release is supposed to be optimized, tagged, clipped, pre-promoted, playlisted, and pre-approved by invisible machines in distant rooms, RZRecords still behaves like a label run by people who would rather mail a CD-R to a stranger than explain themselves to an algorithm. That kind of commitment is almost tender in its own derangement. It says: here is something too weird, too loud, too specific, and too alive to be useful, which is exactly why it matters.

This text was written and HTML coded by Ben Zarik and fact-checked and edited by Haggari Nakashe & gaop to strip out false grandeur, minimize embarrassment, and generally prevent the whole thing from getting too self-important, which would be deeply on-brand and still pretty weird.

UIUIUI, Haggari Nakashe & gaop Drop a Chaotic 12-Track Split on RZRecords

RZRecords cat: RZR2025SUHg · UPC: 5063863770034 · New Release · Digital + Vinyl (CD coming soon)

We don't do things quietly around here. You know that. But every once in a while, a release lands that even we weren't fully prepared for, something so unhinged in the best possible way that it makes you want to flip your desk and start moshing in the ruins. The super WOOPER split is exactly that release.

Fifteen minutes and twenty seconds. That's all it takes. Fifteen minutes and twenty seconds of raw, beautiful, organized chaos, twelve tracks of free jazz, experimental noise, punk fury, and psych weirdness. All killer, zero filler.

🖤 Buy the Vinyl on ElasticStage 🖤

Who Are These People and Why Are They Like This

UIUIUI is an experimental duo consisting of Ori Zornitzer (Plopsk6x) and Itay Raiten (Koala), officially headquartered in the legendary and entirely real-sounding Pee Pee Township, Ohio. Their 2023 release UIUIUI – dies made clear what they're about: fourteen tracks of electronic punk, breakcore, hardcore, and full-throttle improvised mayhem. They arrived at this split fully loaded after re-recording some of their materials, ready to beat you up.

And then there's the other half. If you've been following RZRecords for any length of time, Haggari Nakashe and gaop need no introduction. You've seen their names on splits, on drone records, on that one release that made your neighbor knock and ask if everything was okay. gaop has been active since 2000 across noise, dark ambient, IDM, glitch, industrial, jazz, extreme metal, and lo-fi electro-acoustic improv. Haggari Nakashe, sound artist extraordinaire, label co-owner, your familiar, brings the synths, the bass, and the instinct for sonic architecture that longtime RZRecords listeners know and love. From Bad Dreams Revisited to IN DRONE WE TRUST, these two never release the same thing twice.

What Actually Happens on This Record

The super WOOPER split spans electronic punk, avant-punk, drone, grindcore & hardcore, improvisation, jazz-punk, noise rock, and noisegrind. Yes, ALL OF THAST. And it doesn't feel like genre tourism, it feels like three artists who simply live across all these territories.

UIUIUI come in like a caffeinated assault, fractured rhythms, jazz put through the shredder, punk cross-wired with noise electronics. Then Haggari Nakashe and gaop arrive like the back half of a storm: different in weight, equally uncompromising. Two halves in real dialogue. Not a compilation, a serious conversation.

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We've been running splits since before most streaming platforms existed. CDRs, xerox inserts, floppy disks (we failed, but we tried). What makes a great split is the tension between its halves, the dialogue, the way two worlds share the same space and make something larger. The super WOOPER split nails that. UIUIUI and Haggari Nakashe & gaop are not the same kind of beast, but they are absolutely the same kind of hungry.

This one's for the people who still believe that experimental music made on low means and maximum energy is the most honest music there is. We believe that too. We always have.

🖤 Buy the Vinyl on ElasticStage 🖤

The RZRecords Team

Field Recordings as Music: When Background Becomes Foreground

In the world of experimental audio and DIY noise, we spend a lot of time discussing gear, pedals, and synthesis. But some of the most profound "compositions" aren't created in a studio; they are captured in the wild. At RZRecords, we’ve always been fascinated by the thin line between natural ambient noise and intentional art.

When does a "background" sound stop being an annoyance and start being the lead instrument?

The Art of Found Sound and Musique Concrète

The history of field recording as music stretches back to the pioneers of musique concrète. They understood that a train whistle or a factory hum has a frequency and rhythm just as valid as a piano note.

By pulling these sounds out of their natural environment and placing them on a record, we force the listener to confront the acoustic ecology of our world. It turns the act of listening into an act of discovery.

Why We Listen to "Noise":

For the average listener, a recording of a construction site is just "loud." But for the avant-garde community, that same recording contains:

• Textural Depth: The granular grit of gravel shifting.

• Industrial Rhythms: The accidental loops of heavy machinery.

• Spatial Awareness: The way sound bounces off concrete, creating a natural reverb no plugin can perfectly replicate.

• Spiritual Palate Cleanser: An abstract sound can help unclutter your mind, or prep your psyche for other types of art and being that simply demand other different states.

Shifting the Perspective: From Texture to Centerpiece

Usually, field recordings are used as "ear candy" or intros for drone or black metal tracks. However, the most radical move a creator can make is to let the recording stand alone.

When you remove the "musical" accompaniment, you leave the listener in a state of deep listening. You aren't just hearing a place; you are experiencing the sonic document of a moment that will never happen exactly the same way again. This is the pure, ultimate form of minimalism.

Option A (Focus on the Listener's Experience and Meditative Qualities):

This shift in perspective demands a new kind of discipline from the audience. In a world saturated with constant stimulation and melodic hooks, sitting with a raw field recording can be a surprisingly confrontational experience. It strips away the safety net of harmony and forces a meditative focus on the transient nature of sound itself. The distant rumble of thunder, the lapping of water against a dock, or the hum of fluorescent lights in an empty hallway, these sounds don't follow a verse-chorus structure. They exist in real-time, unfolding organically and inviting the listener to practice a form of sonic mindfulness that is increasingly rare in our fast-paced digital age.

Option B (Focus on the Technical/Creative Process of the Artist):

For the artist, committing to a standalone field recording also means embracing a different kind of compositional skill: the art of curation. The "composition" is no longer about synthesis or playing an instrument, but about the patient act of listening and editing. It is the decision of where to place the microphone, the choice of which thirty-second slice of a two-hour recording captures the perfect emotional arc, and the subtle art of mastering these natural sounds to sit perfectly in the sonic spectrum. It transforms the artist from a creator of sound into a hunter and gatherer of acoustic artifacts, presenting them not as raw sounds, but as finished pieces of sonic sculpture.

Option C (Focus on the Recording as a Foundation and Muse):

Of course, letting the recording stand alone is a powerful statement, but another profound approach is to treat the field recording not as the final piece, but as the sacred foundation upon which new structures are built. In this context, the environmental audio becomes more than just "ear candy", it transforms into the compositional cornerstone. The natural reverb of a cave dictates the delay times for a subsequent synth line. The rhythmic pattern of a passing train becomes the tempo map for the drums. The accidental melody of wind chimes is picked up and developed by a guitar. By building layers around this core, the artist enters into a unique collaboration with the environment itself, using the raw sound of the world not just as an inspiration, but as the architectural blueprint for the entire track or releaseThe RZRecords Philosophy: Everything is Signal

At RZRecords, our mission has always been to push the boundaries of the "audible." Whether it’s harsh wall noise or the delicate, eerie sounds of an abandoned power station, the goal is the same: to challenge the hierarchy of sound.

The next time you’re out with a portable recorder (or even just your phone), stop and listen. The world is performing a symphony of found sound 24/7. All you have to do is hit record and let the background become the foreground.

BETRAYAL by SMEGMASMOG

 

Honey, wake up, the new SMEGMASMOG just dropped, on time for International Women's Day!

It's super loud, really abrasive, and distinctively sad due to the keyboard lines added to the noise, feedback, shrieks, and tortured screaming.

If there was ever a depressive blackened HWN genre, this is it. Obviously, it thematically revolves around the title, which gives you a whiff of the upcoming rot, BETRAYAL.

It's a two-track album, over 40 minutes of pleasurable aural abuse. I could go on about it but you should really just make time and listen to what these chaps do.

It's available on their Bandcamp, and will also pop up on streaming platforms within the next month or so.

While you're clicking links, make sure to follow their Instagram page for more updates. They really deserve your attention.

The fusion of harsh noise wall with melodic keyboard elements creates something genuinely unsettling in ways traditional HNW rarely achieves. Where most harsh noise wall maintains an almost meditative static quality through sheer unrelenting consistency, SMEGMASMOG punctures that wall with haunting melodic fragments that feel like memories bleeding through concrete. The keyboard lines don't soften the blow, instead, they make the abuse feel more personal, more targeted, transforming what could be abstract sonic punishment into something that cuts closer to lived emotional experience. It's the difference between standing in a blizzard and standing in a blizzard while remembering warmth.

The International Women's Day release timing adds another dimension to the album's thematic weight, though SMEGMASMOG wisely lets the music speak for itself rather than over-explaining the connection. At over 40 minutes across two tracks, "BETRAYAL" demands serious commitment from listeners, this isn't background music or something you put on casually. Set aside time, ideally in complete darkness with headphones turned up dangerously loud, and let the feedback, shrieks, and keyboard-driven despair wash over you. This is noise as emotional exorcism, and it works best when you're willing to sit in the discomfort until something shifts.

4AU by Sabixatzil, Haggari Nakashe, gaop & NishMa

We have some very exciting news to share!

Today, this killer release is dropping via our good friend, Fruit Exports.

This gloomy and doomy 25-minute-long session is a an amalgamation of various musical styles, blending elements of free jazz, noise, drone, and doom, along with a bunch of other genres that cleverly overlap within this eclectic Venn diagram. 

It was a fun live session that some of the RZRecords team had the pleasure of participating in, each contributing their unique vibe, flair, and creative energy to the groovy noise-soundscape we crafted together.

The lineup was:
Sabixatzil - Guitar
Haggari Nakashe - Synths
gaop - Clarinet
NishMa - Drums, percussion

Following the live session, the original source files underwent a light process of re-editing, during which we infused the recording with some studio magic, and sprinkled some more dirt on it, enhancing the auditory experience and further elevating the raw sounds we had initially produced. 

This refinement transformed our joined performance into a polished-turd-like piece of noise art, capturing the essence of our improvisational exploration while also offering a more cohesive listening experience. But you can be the judge of that.

We were incredibly fortunate to connect with the wonderful folks at the Fruit Exports label, who expressed interest in our work and graciously agreed to release this session for the world to hear. Their support and enthusiasm for our project not only provided us with a wider platform but also validated the creative efforts of all the artists involved. 

This isn't just a collaboration between artists but also a collaboration between like-minded labels, and we strongly encourage you to check out their other releases on their Bandcamp, which have been accumulating over the last year, as there's a lot of inspiring music coming from them.

We are eagerly looking forward to sharing this unique sonic experience with you, don't feel pressured though. We're also looking forward to collaborating with Fruit Exports again in the very near future!

This EP is available for streaming and name-your-price download on the Fruit Exports Bandcamp.

The instrumental lineup here creates fascinating textural possibilities that wouldn't emerge in a more conventional band setup. Sabixatzil's guitar provides the foundation of grit and distortion, while Haggari's synths wash over everything with oscillating dread. But it's gaop's clarinet that becomes the wildcard, a voice that slips between melodic fragments and squealing dissonance, sometimes conversing with the rhythm section, sometimes fighting against it. NishMa's percussion work anchors the chaos without attempting to tame it, providing just enough structure to keep the whole thing from dissolving entirely while still leaving space for the improvisation to breathe and mutate. This combination of traditional jazz instrumentation (clarinet, drums) with noise elements (synth abuse, distorted guitar) creates a sonic middle ground where neither genre dominates, resulting in something genuinely hybrid.

The partnership with Fruit Exports represents exactly the kind of cross-pollination that keeps experimental music communities vital and interconnected. Rather than operating in isolation, RZRecords continues to build bridges with like-minded outlets, creating networks of support that benefit everyone involved. Fruit Exports has been quietly building an impressive catalog over the past year, and this collaboration gives both labels' audiences a chance to discover new artists they might have otherwise missed. The name-your-price model on Bandcamp also reflects a shared philosophy about accessibility, these aren't releases designed to maximize profit, but rather to maximize reach and impact. When underground labels collaborate like this, they're not just releasing music; they're actively building the infrastructure that allows experimental music to survive and thrive outside commercial channels.

One Eighty Seven by Haggari Nakashe

Haggari Nakashe’s "One Eighty Seven" immerses listeners in a haunting soundscape that poignantly encapsulates the deep, often overwhelming emotions tied to seasonal affective disorder. As the seasons shift, so does the listener's mood, and these droning dark ambient textures create an atmosphere that echoes the melancholy accompanying this cyclical change. The synth layers evoke a sense of desolation, mirroring the stark contrast between the vibrant summer and the mournful winter. Each note echoes the feelings of isolation and introspection that many experience as the days grow shorter, enveloping the listener in a blanket of sorrow that is both familiar and profound.


The structure of "One Eighty Seven" effectively mirrors the rhythmic nature of seasonal depression, using a semi-pleasant yet unsettling drone that feels like the weight of impending darkness. This slow build never culminates, as feelings constantly twist and turn, perfectly capturing the unpredictable emotional landscape of those affected by this condition. As the track progresses, it invites reflection, encouraging listeners to confront their own seasonal struggles while reveling in the haunting beauty of the composition, mirroring the feeling a cold cloudy day leaves behind, where the clear air and the smell of rain mark one's soul with invisible melancholy. By the time the piece fades into silence, it leaves behind an echo of sadness that lingers in the air, a reminder of the yearly cycle of depression that many face. In this way, "One Eighty Seven" serves as a musical exploration of internal turmoil and a deeply resonant emotional experience that speaks to the universal struggle with the changing tides of life.


RZRecords catalog number: RZRx25x1

For fans of dark ambient music and experimental electronic soundscapes, "One Eighty Seven" represents a masterclass in synth-based composition and atmospheric production. Haggari Nakashe utilizes modular synthesis techniques and layered drone textures to create an immersive listening experience that appeals to followers of artists like Lustmord, Tim Hecker, and The Haxan Cloak. Available for streaming on Spotify, Bandcamp, and other major music platforms, this dark ambient album showcases the producer's ability to craft emotionally resonant electronic music that transcends typical genre boundaries. The album's production quality demonstrates professional studio techniques combined with raw experimental elements, making it essential listening for anyone interested in ambient noise, drone music, or contemporary experimental electronic music in 2025.

Mental health awareness through music has become increasingly important in experimental and ambient music communities, and "One Eighty Seven" contributes meaningfully to this conversation by addressing seasonal affective disorder through sonic exploration. The album serves as both therapeutic soundscape and artistic statement, joining a growing catalog of mental health-focused ambient releases from independent labels like RZRecords. Listeners searching for music about depression, winter blues, or emotional wellness will find this dark ambient release particularly resonant, as it authentically captures the psychological weight of seasonal depression without resorting to cliché or oversimplification. The track is available as a free or name-your-price download on Bandcamp, making it accessible to anyone seeking cathartic electronic music or atmospheric soundscapes for meditation, reflection, or emotional processing during difficult seasonal transitions.

xPhin - takahashi

 

xPhin - takahashi, album cover by Azalia Imamutdinova

It brings us much joy to inform you about the next release!
xPhin's "takahashi" is a unique delight, and every single track on this concept album is a certified banger.

It's a wonderful type of minimalistic ambient music, originating in noise, but existing as melodic synth drones with a certain punch to them. That is until you get to the parts of the album where it's a full-blown, face-melting, HNW assault. This album has intricate layers, subtle motifs, and well-thought-out complexity.
In "takahashi", xPhin is a skilled storyteller, taking you on a journey. 

Speaking of tales and journeys, the nine tracks on this album might or might not correspond with the nine panels of the album cover. It's up to the listener to decipher and establish the connection. Tell us if you do, please; as the abstract might (and should) resonate differently with each listener. 

xPhin is a name you might recall from RZRecords 6 WAY SPLIT, Vol.2  to which he contributed the track Dark Macadamia. It's a huge pleasure for us to have him back in our ranks; especially for such a wonderful album. 

Here's to many more releases such as this one, and peace on earth, obviously.

"3" by cÆNINEZ, Haggari Nakashe & gaop, and SMEGMASMOG is finally out on all platforms!

"3" is a split release by cÆNINEZ, Haggari Nakashe & gaop, and SMEGMASMOG, showcasing just how interesting, layered, dynamic, and complex noise music can be.

This release is a standing proof of the greatness of a genre, which is often blamed for being diluted by an infinite number of artists on their home computers. 

With only three tracks, and clocking just under half an hour, this release brings forth a potpourri of haunting sounds, the darkest of ambients, drones, shrieks, and beeps. 

With the sheer amount of music released every second, this testament to the remarkable side of noise might get lost to time, only to be occasionally remembered by the participants themselves. But such is always the nature and risk of music. This is especially true for noise music genres. The constant fate of extreme, independent, and experimental releases that have little to no mass appeal to begin with.

At the end of the day, it is up to each and every one of us to make sure that the music we love is not overshadowed by the passage of time. The artists, the labels, the listeners, the people sharing links online, we each do our tiny part in appreciation and preservation. It's a delicate ecosystem, and we hope that our work on bringing forth "3" is nurturing enough for you to keep on flourishing. 

Releases like "3" face constant risk of being lost to algorithmic noise. By writing about, sharing, and archiving these works, listeners become active participants in experimental music preservation. Every stream, download, and blog mention acts as evidence that this corner of the underground exists. If you create avant-jazz, drone, HNW, or noise rock, we want to hear it. Read our guide, then hit us up for a spot on our split series. The ecosystem survives only when we each do our tiny part.

Unlike solo albums, splits foster direct dialogue between artists. They are the most accessible entry point for listeners new to depressive blackened noise or electroacoustic improvisation. They require no expensive studio time, only the willingness to share space with another artist's vision.

SMEGMASMOG - RAW POWER

RAW POWER, the brand-new release by SMEGMASMOG is now available on Bandcamp. 

We'll also be distributing SMEGMASMOG's back catalog soon, along with a few new releases that are currently in the works.

In Drone We Trust, by NishMa, Haggari Nakashe and gaop

 A while back we told you about an upcoming special release that wasn't only a collaboration between artists, but also a joint effort between RZRecords and Ranger Magazine.

Ranger Magazine was the first platform on which we released IN DRONE WE TRUST, the dreamy, spooky, wonderfully haunting album by NishMa, Haggari Nakashe, and gaop.

This release is interesting as it's almost a meditative trance of sorts, while also being heavy-hitting (bordering on doom metal aesthetics) at times, and ambient-like, droning, and experimental enough to contain elements of noise and free jazz.

We're now glad to announce that this album is available on all streaming platforms, and if not all then surely most of the big ones. 

Please, go on and enjoy this thing of beauty.

One last note: while this year our main focus is releasing and distributing digital albums, we are considering releasing this gem in physical format. This will mostly be up to our listeners, which is based on the play statistics.

Every now and then we toy around with the thought of doing new CDR releases, cassettes, and even vinyl, but as of now, there was no special demand that we noticed. If you feel strongly about owning 

our releases or merch, please let us know!!!

[UPCOMING] In Drone We Trust - in collaboration with Ranger Magazine

We're very excited to share that the soon to be published issue #4 of the wonderful Ranger Magazine will include a premiere release of In Drone We Trust, the long awaited collaboration between NishMa, Haggari Nakashe & gaop.

This nine track album has been in the works for the entirety of 2023, with a few singles (with earlier versions of the tracks) appearing throughout the year on compilations.

The album is (obviously) drone heavy, incorporating elements of dark ambient, noise, experimental or avant-garde metal, and just a dash of woodwind instruments and world music motifs.

Ranger magazine is a web publication (with printed copies) dedicated to experimental art, poetry, music and film. We encourage you to explore past issues and stay tuned for issue #4.

In Drone We Trust, by NishMa, Haggari Nakashe & gaop

Ecstatic Feedback - A Pukehammer Records Compilation

 There's a wonderful new compilation out on Pukehammer Records, and our beloved gaop is participating with When the Lights Explode.

But by all means, please listen to the entirety of the compilation as there was lots of effort put into gathering such a superb release, and it shows.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

RZRecords 6 WAY SPLIT, Vol.2

Hot on the heels of Vol.1 it's out extreme pleasure to present: RZRecords 6 WAY SPLIT, Vol.2 !!!

We were lucky enough to be presented with enough materials for two back to back releases. 
This made the process a bit longer because we had to find the right concept for the releases to work in a harmonious way, but this is far from a complaint, it was a pleasure to be trusted with the participants' art, and to come up with a result we are very proud of.

As always, our goal is to find interesting collaboration, to do our tiny part in the promotion of artists you might have not heard of, and in the process to discover new music that excites us.

This is yet again a purely online release, which is spread across several streaming platforms. 
Feel free to share it anywhere, and look for other instances it on other platforms that might pop up later.

The participants in Volume.1 are:

(in order of appearance)

• ohrr
• Intro Vertic
• DEEP DOWN
• NishMa
• xPhin
• Mierdia

Generically this is a very interesting release, so per our usual MO, there's a huge mash up of genres going on.

While as always, the color palette stays dark, this compilation travels between electronic subgenres such as techno, IDM and ambient, into a more nu-metal inspired side of electronics, followed by low end, dark ambient sound art, finishing with a string of highly creative and very interesting noise tracks.

We can only hope that you enjoy is as much as we did while compiling, and still having fun listening to it.

A huge thanks to participants, listeners, and all the RZRecords folks who worked on it and obviously their families for accepting the weirdos that we are, blasting noise in the middle of the night, running away to our computers to fix stuff, corresponding 24/7 on stuff that "normal" people don't care about.

Psychic War Against Cop City: An Extreme Music Compilation

The kind folks over at Delirium Psychosis Productions released a 50 track compilation titled "Psychic War Against Cop City: An Extreme Music Compilation" with the profits going to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund.

It's a good compilation with lots of interesting tracks and genres, and a very good cause.

Some of our artists participated, so if you're into the stuff we're doing, here's a great opportunity to contribute or just take a moment to learn about this important cause.

Here are the direct links to the tracks:

• Haggari Nakashe - Modern Life 
• gaop & NishMa - It Must Flow
• Paxit - The Hidden Tongue

Haggari Nakashe's track is a synth drone gone noise. gaop & Nishma's track is multilayered noise, with drums and heavily distorted woodwinds. Paxit delivered straight up experimental doom metal.

NishMa, gaop & Haggari Nakashe - The Hidden Hand

RZRecords proudly present The Hidden Hand, a brand new single by NishMa, gaop & Haggari Nakashe, collaborating on a drone oriented noise track, accompanied by live drums.

The track is available for streaming on most platforms, and for purchase via BandCamp.

2023 is looking great release wise, with a strong first quarter, and a few more surprises up our sleeve for the near future.

Software Bondage / gaop split

Software Bondage and gaop provide four tracks each, eight tracks in total.

Software Bondage brings crunchy, minimalistic, noise oriented sounds, a really interesting take on noise, with rhythmic patterns, melodies, granular distortion and lots more stuff that makes it stand out in the genre.

gaop mixes woodwind instruments, ambient, electroacoustic, IDM, avant-jazz and some other stuff thrown into this weird beautiful mix.

Split album by Yasuyuki Uesugi and gaop

Split album by Yasuyuki Uesugi and gaop.

It's a very interesting listen indeed.

FROM THE ARTISTS:

A split release featuring the music of Yasuyuki Uesugi and gaop.
The result is a harmonious blending, combining two schools of electronic music.

Yasuyuki Uesugi offers layered, textured, repetitive and somewhat ritualistic works of sound art, honoring the long standing tradition of Japanese noise.

gaop brings a different variation to the table, in the form of electronic ambient with hints of classical, minimalist, avant-garde.

May this combination be a blessing to your ears.

Itai Matos & gaop - Sfinot

Sfinot, a collaboration between Itai Matos and gaop is now available for streaming, purchase, and as a limited multi-format release.

This three track EP merges noise oriented soundscapes with spoken word poetry.

Here's the original cover, featuring a very young Itai Matos, taken at gaop's bedroom studio, on an early digital camera:

You can find most of Itai's solo albums on his bandcamp, right here: Itai Matos.
We encourage you to follow his page and support him by purchasing his releases. 

His discography is pretty interesting, with tracks in both English and Hebrew, spanning across various genres. 

gaop - Moth

This type of post is really fun (for us to do), a blast from the past if you will.
We hope you appreciate it cos sometimes nostalgia can be a bit like smelling your own farts. That said, so is experimental music, so there's that. We can only hope you like it.

This post is dated back, but we're actually writing it in the future, or present, because while the release is from the past, the update is of the here and now type.

The release, Moth, by gaop, is one of the first physical copy releases by RZR. Dating back to 2004-2005.
Originally released as a four track EP (tracks 1-4). Later released with three additional tracks (and another hidden gem that kicks in after three minutes of silence).

The CDR came in a paper sleeve, with the art and details xeroxed and glued on both sides. Some versions of the CDR were numbered, some were spraypainted, there were several batches. Everything was put together after hours, in various living rooms.

Here are pictures of a copy of the release, taken by Bulletproof Socks, which also provided a short review (click the link). Hope they don't mind we use it, cos in the present we don't have any more physical copies of it to photograph.

Primitive stuff, but those were the glory days of DIY.

The release itself is a wonderful journey into dark ambient, experimental sounds (mostly voice based sound art), feedback, drones and noise. 

This humble release got lots of reviews that made us proud, both the positive and the negative. Unfortunately, most blogs, zines and sites the provided those reviews are no longer in existence, so there's nothing to link to, nowhere to copy paste from. 

In those days, MySpace was our biggest platform (it catered mostly to emo kids, but we found some great collabs on it, and traded our releases with some of the biggest names in noise back then), YouTube wasn't yet what it is today, and the review sites were our way to get the word out there.
So much changed since then, it's no wonder that some of our stuff is now lost to time.

Uploading everything to streaming services makes everything easier, but the above also serves as a lesson - platforms die, so do hard drives. Always back up your stuff and save copies!

Above is the Spotify embed, but you can also find it on lots of other platforms.

Please make sure to follow our various profiles to get updates about the stuff we do, or in this case DID, sometime in the past.

PS:

I was now reminded that there in fact were some inserts that came with the CDR, but we don't have any recollection as to what they were.

Maybe some day we'll reach out to people that have the release according to our Discogs, but we're probably not going to do that anytime soon. Also, Discogs is not really friendly towards us, so please, feel free to add or edit our releases, we're not good at it.