OUR STORY
Max "MP" Pazhutan (b.1974), is a composer/synthesist/instrumentalist whose works are very diverse and ranges from Electronic Experimental to Conceptual Sound Art. He has composed and recorded hundreds of electronic music pieces. After composing and recording more than a dozen albums on magnetic tapes, “Sampler Of Insecurity” became his last work recorded on analog devices. Pazhutan is also a prolific educator, teaching internationally using remote means over the internet to compose and perform Electronic music, Jazz, Experimental music and has a famous music appreciation course.
Honey “vH+” Pazhutan, is a sound artist, a researcher of arts, philosophy and science, and a composer. Her interest in composition is rooted predominantly in modern and contemporary music, most notably John Cage. She is also an avid aficionado of Miles Davis and John Coltrane’s definition of jazz. vH+ believes that technology eventually decreases the size of the gap between utopia and reality. She looks at sound art phenomenologically, and in her compositions she avoids unnecessary ornaments and is longing for the truth of sound objects. vH+ was interested in unusual sounds since her childhood. Became interested in music, as an extension of all sounds. She was interested in singing but started to play music with harmonica, then nylon string guitar before she discovered that her favorite espressivo instruments are electrophones and computational sound generators. She studied and explores vocal techniques (mezzo-soprano).
Max Pazhutan’s first project was Acidmeg. This was a collection of tape works heavily influenced by Techno and Trance movements. Acidmeg’s method of recording was a one-take two-track tape recording, therefore the recordings fall in the live-in-the-studio category. Acidmeg’s first album, Voltage, contains the whole philosophy of all the Acidmeg albums to come. The music is psychedelic, paranoid and freaked-out. The 2nd album "Sexmagnet" continues the same direction but gets harsher. In 3rd album, “Gods Are Closer”, Pazhutan’s writing becomes totally different; While it’s more close to “Les Pouces Verts” it is also a true Acidmeg effort. This album has some noticable works like “Looking Into The Eyes Of God” and “The Wizard Within”. Pazhutan recorded “Error” in 1997, which presents a new taste in Techno music with tracks such as “Flush” and “Error”, becoming more psychedelic and energitic yet more dramatic and moody. Acidmeg’s next albums were “Open” and “Freeze”, both recorded in 1997. In 1998, Pazhutan wrote “Wounds”, an album of trippy electro-house works that was not sounding as the previous Acidmeg works. In the summer of 1998, he produced "Hashtronix". Hashtronix is Acidmeg’s wildest album, exploring dark and long fiery tracks like “A Million Lightyears Away”. Finally in the fall of 1998, Pazhutan wrote “Perfumed Graphix”. This album, which is the last of Acidmeg albums, has very improved in terms of composition and recording. The last Acidmeg work is very dramatized, and marks the end of using the gear that’s been used in all previous Acidmeg albums.
In 1998, Max Pazhutan started a new project called "Liqui Syn Dementia". Liqui Syn Dementia is the domain of most hallucinatory compositions, in a very wide spectrum. In that time, Pazhutan was heavily influenced by C.G.Jung and Tim Leary and that might be the cause of Liqui Syn Dementia albums sound so hallucinatory. Musically, these albums are tonal flights completely consisting of synthesis techniques, and early works show tendency to German seventies Krautrock artists, yet the composition methods was totally different from the very beginning. “Shapeless Visions”, recorded in 2001, is the first Liqui Syn Dementia album, containing two long compositions. The same year Pazhutan recorded “Spiral To The Oblivion”. Each Liqui Syn Dementia work is a concept album, with tracks related to a specific topic. Some of them like “Aquatales” are impressed by literature and arts, and others like “Differential”, “Kykeon” and “Pythagorea” are influenced by philosophy, logic and mathemathics. In 2008, Liqui Syn Dementia recorded "Differential", a very long piece of music (more than 71 minutes) influenced by Gilles Deleuze and performed with tens of different synthesizer lines.
In 2008, Max Pazhutan started to work under another moniker, "Artzimuth", and this time his interest in composition shifted from long synthesizer suites to short IDM tracks which incorporates audio programming languages and MIDI networking environments. Rhythm is a very important component in Artzimuth tracks. Pazhutan has created compositions with unusual shifting tempi, fractional time signatures, complex meters and rhythm overlapping, while the pieces are preserving their dance music quality. Artzimuth includes some of Pazhutan's grooviest creations such as "Discrete Multitone Tripping", "View From Nowhere", "Eight Bit And Figurative", "Mind At Large", "Matte Painting", "Air Mass", "Squeeze Mapper" and "Parallel Scale Factor".
In 2010, Honey Pazhutan began composing and improvising music using gaming consoles and DSP techniques. Under her moniker "Wind8" she recorded her first album "Connections: A Meditation On Artificial Intelligence" the same year.
From 2009 to 2013, Max Pazhutan focused on installation art and computer music. Together with Honey Pazhutan, he launched "M P | v H+ Computational Sound Art Projects" to create works that are profoundly technology-oriented and comprising open source coding systems, visual programming languages and self-developed software synthesizers, to be presented in art galleries and open urban spaces.
In 2014, Honey Pazhutan recorded "Aquarian Age : A Meditation On Attributes of Uranus: Inventions, Machines, Fellowship of Humankind". This is a collection of drone pieces improvised on electronic organ and live processed using custom DSP software, and additional sonic material is affixed to the work using SuperCollider 3 by Max Pazhutan.
Max and Honey Pazhutan initiated the project "The Quark Model" to produce deep and minimal techno works for fashion events and clubs. The Quark Model's tracks usually start with a long build-up and synthesizers are layered in a way to be easy in order to be mixed more easily. Mostly dominant components of this compositions are divisible by four, while other layers explore a healthy dose of irregularity precisely superimposed over highly solid rhythmic structure.
Max and Honey Pazhutan established their "Cybernetic Ensemble" aka "Cy-Ens" to categorize some of their works that were suitable for concert performance and sometimes needed a larger group of participants. In Cy-Ens, the music is made with computer programming languages and various digital technologies such as game consoles and tablet computers.
As long time admirers of highly formalized electronic music, Max and Honey Pazhutan wanted to reinterpret and perform some of their favorite masterworks from twentieth century and contemporary composers, using their own innovative methods. They founded yet another project called "sin(thesis)". sin(thesis) came to life with the passion of technical and detailed deconstruction of "la musique savante" using innovative computational methods. Therefore computer programming languages are the integral part of sin(thesis) music. sin(thesis) tries to understand and explore the possibility of having a solid repertoire for computer as a musical instrument.
[ The name sin(thesis) is influenced by a quote from Pierre Boulez: "it is my belief that our generation will be concerned quite as much with synthesis as with discovery properly so called - and perhaps even more so. It will be devoted to the expanding of techniques, the generalizing of methods and the rationalizing of procedures of composing or, in other words, to synthesizing the great creative currents that have made their appearance since the end of the last century." ]
Max and Honey Pazhutan voluntarily created music and performed in a benefit concert for three years in a row, for "World Health Organization" on the universal tuberculosis day of 2013, 2014 and 2015.
In 2015, Max and Honey Pazhutan started to work on a new line of compositions which were focused mainly on recent analog synthesizers. As the number of compositions increased, they felt that a new project is being born. They called this new project "Twarc Pyroelectric" and a year after, they started to record the tracks in their own studio. The music of Twarc Pyroelectric is unclassifiable, with sci-fi storylines in the mental background and simplistic synthesized sound textures.
The duo relocated to North America in 2017, and the same year they signed with Filter Union label of UK to release works from their various music projects including Twarc Pyroelectric, Cy-Ens and The Quark Model.