But after that success, that's when we realized we had something on our hands." That something is a distinct, very direct sound. 'Circle's' pounding drums are as haunting as the void, but the shifting digital tones, coarsely sampled strings, and scratchy, inert rhymes are as moving as a lonely radio transmission from solitary explorers deep in the night sky. The Mush roster is undeniably diverse, from the instrumental hip-hop stylings of Omid and Fat Jon (a.k.a. Maurice Galactica), to the straight up DJ tools of Boom Bip's 'Doo Doo Breaks', to the sing-song melodies of Her Space Holiday, to the latin breaks of Lulu Mushi (label owner Cindy's alias), to the intellectual art-electronica of cLOUDDEAD. But still, listen carefully and that serious, other worldly sound of Mush Records will call you in your sleep.
Not unlike a voyage to the moon and back, the trajectory of Mush has been a perilous adventure. Cindy and Robert met through Robert's studio in Cincinnati. At the time, he was making house music and looked to do some downtempo on the side, Cindy needed studio time, and their friendship sparked. It was through this studio that the pair met Doseone, and later Fat Jon. Around the time that they started to take the label seriously, Robert moved to Japan and Cindy to San Francisco. Following the mid-nineties success of DJ Krush, Japan was saturated with dark downtempo, and Robert reflects that, though he moved to Japan for personal reasons, this did effect the label, "At the time there was a lot of downtempo going on in Japan, and that led us to sign Neutrino," the minimalist Japanese duo who were major contributors to the nineties' downtempo scene in Tokyo. The two reunited in New York, but found that running a label there was difficult. "I'm from New York, I love New York. But the rents are so high that we could only work from cramped spaces filled with boxes and paperwork." Cindy has family in California, so the pair decided to move their "mission control" to Los Angeles. "We're in West Hollywood, and yeah, we miss the energy of New York, but there's a lot here for us. A lot of the artists that we work with are on the West Coast, and it's just a lot easier to get things done." Mush has found a home.
Staring up into the night sky, it's hard not to feel a sense of wonder. Listening to any of Mush's releases, a similar sense of wonder creeps into your consciousness. Constellations of sounds compete for your attention, and ideological concepts are like an ever present moon, glowing through the night and lighting your way. If records grew on trees, Moon Trees would bear Mush Records as their fruit.