The idea of Coherent States existed long before its implementation. But even since the first dim plans, one thing was certain: we would ask Michael Ridge to record something for us. If we had to add a description for his entry in the music encyclopedia, it would be something along the lines of multimedia microcassete exhibitioner and experimental sound artist. This is because Michael Ridge, either under his name or as Zebra Mu, has created a small artistic universe full of dozens of microreleases, with the difficulty of reproducing the medium occasionaly having a central role in his conceptual reasoning. His work doesn’t get vinyl release, and there is no concept of a full-length album here. Everything is done in small scale. The primary axis is noise music, which drifts into more experimental fields with cut-up logic both in composition and in artwork / format. In our own mind, he rests on the concepts of GX Jupitter-Larsen and his interests span from zine and collage art, dozens of items he manufactures and exhibits in various art spacess, to the fantastic Quagga Curious Sounds label that he operates since 2008, with more than 80 releases of like-minded artists (like Crank Sturgeon, Smegma, Extreme Noise Terror, Astro, Guilty Connector and more). Michael Ridge agreed to record something for us. We listened to “Encrusted Horse Sockets” with enthusiasm when it was sent to us as new material and within its 20 minutes it manages to merge the familiar abstract lo-fi collages with some of the most aggressive music of his we have ever listened.
