amid zero echo

thomas dimuzio

drone records

2014 10" LPx2

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reviews

“Nerve endings are stimulated and caressed...” — Freq

“The best artists are just able to make even the tiniest of things shine brightly.” — Kulttuurivihkot

“Let’s just say the sounds flow beautifully...” — The Wire

“...glacially paced metallic buzz, evanescent mysteriousness, and some downright gorgeous chordal smolder...” —Aquarius Records

“Music as a total immersion event.” — Vital Weekly

“It feels like you’re about to be put through one of the most perilous struggles of your entire life due to the almost oppressive grandeur of Amid Zero Echo.” — SlyVinyl

“...the drones of Dimuzio... are among the most powerful I've heard in recent years.” — NonPop

Freq

Lovingly presented as two clear 10” vinyl records wrapped up in Mars Wellink‘s artwork which graces the gatefold sleeve in suitably transcendantly minimal style, Amid Zero Echo swells up and into four sides of the most immensely practised drones imaginable. On this occasion, Thomas Dimuzio uses ultimately unrecognisable guitar-derived sounds as the base source material through which to seemingly condense the entirety of the cosmos into around an hour or so of sidereal time; but relativistically-speaking, this album seemingly fills up so much more than the quotidian ticking by of minutes on the clock and grooves in the record might usually indicate. harmonics flicking and bouncing off every available reverberant surface.

Standing waves unfold and expand across the album, sympathetic harmonics flicking and bouncing off every available reverberant surface in the room. This might encourage the use of headphones (which are always a good idea), but through speakers and at substantial volume the results are so much more satisfyingly earthy and bass-laden than most earpieces are capable of delivering.

Well-travelled psychonauts will doubtless feel at home as each disc unfolds and is flipped ritualistically from side to side to side on the turntable platter. Thomas Dimuzio has been at this sort of thing for a couple of decades now, and his plentiful expertise and experience is evident throughout.Amid Zero Echo as the dynamics seize control of the heard environment in a way that only a broad-spectrum aural bath such as this can achieve. Diving into this record is like tuning in to the background hum of the universe with the gain turned up to eleven; even better is letting the sound wash over, around and then ultimately giving in and absorbing its presence until the music is almost viscerally inside the body, regulating its processes and eventually allowing the motion to modulate breathing and pulse rate. nerve endings are stimulated and caressed.

Amid Zero Echo provokes a feeling of floatation-tank stasis punctuated by moments of revelatory bliss as nerve endings are stimulated and caressed, the ears becoming a portal to the sublime. There’s a reason this kind of all-encompassing soma bath music was dubbed isolationism back in the Nineties, after all – once embarked upon the journey, it becomes increasingly difficult to perceive, and more importantly, feel, the world beyond the sound, while simultaneously, paradoxically, becoming more keenly aware of the totality of existence.

Such immensity may not be for everyday listening, perhaps, unless the daily routine includes perching on the brink of an endless void gazing out in blissful contemplation of the vastness of space while time is held in abeyance and the allotted twenty-four hours stretch, morph and become flexible. In which case, there would be little need of Amid Zero Echo‘s services in any event; but without benefit of such proximity to satori, this LP will just have to do instead.

Kulttuurivihkot

The drones of Thomas Dimuzio, a veteran of several decades, are in turn top class. The Californian artist, who has in many ways been ahead of the times, on Amid Zero Echo (2x10") recreates a rather traditional drone-loop pattern. He nevertheless does it so well that this results in something retro-stylishly beautiful, instead of seeming, due to its (pseudo) simplicity, too familiar. The best artists are just able to make even the tiniest of things shine brightly. —J. Tuomas Harviainen,

The Wire

Four lush sides of slowbuilding guitar based thought extensions by this San Francisco musician. The pieces all have different personalities, but as with so many recordings of this type, words fails me in articulating them accurately. Let’s just say the sounds flowbeautifully, with lots of variation in volume and pitch, with a reliance on layering and amplification resulting in moments with some stunning Chatam-esque roars. —Byron Coley

Aquarius Records

The Bay Area stalwart Thomas Dimuzio has long been known for his improvisation chops with electronics and live sampling strategies, sporting a discography littered with the who's who of the avant-garde elite (Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Matmos, Dan Burke, Wobbly, Joseph Hammer, Negativland, Psychic TV, amongst a litany of others). His albums can be filled with wildly colorful bursts of electrical jitter and post-Bayle clusterings; and at others, they can embrace the slow-motion rippling of the finest by the holy minimalists of the last century. Amid Zero Echo falls into the latter category, one that he has mastered within the Dimmer collaborative project with Joseph Hammer in particular. Guitars are what we are told to be the source material for this double 10" released on the ever reliable Substantia Innominata subsidiary of Drone Records. The four sides to this album each sport low rumbling dronecraft with variable hues and swarms, with streaks of machined feedback and motorized abrasion peppering the gravity-suck drone heaviness. Dimuzio tracks through his bleak / black spaces with glacially paced metallic buzz, evanescent mysteriousness, and some downright gorgeous chordal smolder that falls somewhere between the form destruction dronework of RST and the vacant space orchestrations from Thomas Koner.

Vital Weekly

While I was listening to this double 10" record, I was thinking that Thomas Dimuzio has a very distinct sound, although I would not go as far as to say that I could pick him blind in a contest. The four pieces on this record are what we know from Dimuzio and what we love; at least that's what I do. It's never easy to know what Dimuzio is doing, and perhaps I have some romantic notion about it: take a teeny tiny fragment of sound and capture that is an endless range of sound effects, samplers, oscillators and filters and what else he got down in his studio. The cover says 'guitar and processing', so there you go: what do I know. Like so many others he knows how to manipulate the guitar beyond - light-years beyond actually - the sound of the guitar and it sounds like this dark, slow moving landmass; Drone Records, who are behind this series, calls him a sonic alchemist, and that term is perhaps over-used, but maybe not in this case, I think. Dimuzio creates the kind of drones that many dream of and few can actually do: that of a constant swirl up, down and side ways spin, always moving and changing, never in state of standstill. It's music that could as easily work for as a soundtrack for a film, but is best enjoyed on it's own, in a barely lit room at night and at a louder volume: only then, I would think, the true beauty will be fully uncovered. Music as a total immersion event. The only downside is you have to get and change the record a few times; on the bright side, you have four pieces and the choice to release this as a double 10" is a great one. One day on CD, perhaps, please? —Frans de Waard

SlyVinyl

Haze. Dust. Flash. Shale. It makes you think of the Big Bang – the beginning of everything. Amid Zero Echo is an apt soundtrack for the genesis of our world. Dimuzio’s heavy guitar drones continually loop and saturate the air of the vantablack cave he’s trekking in to. Amid Zero Echo feels like the split-second before you see a bomb go off. It feels like Dimuzio took every adjective you could think of in relation to the apocalypse, war, the cosmos, the ocean and caverns and compressed it in to what you see here – kind of like what Eno did with the Windows 95 start up sound. It feels like you’re about to be put through one of the most perilous struggles of your entire life due to the almost oppressive grandeur of Amid Zero Echo. Definitely give this a chance if you’re a fan of the likes of Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker, Windy & Carl, The Azusa Plane, etc. Check out a preview of Amid Zero Echo via the SoundCloud stream belowand see what you think of it. Cheers!

NonPop

As "unsung artistic figures" THOMAS Dimuzio is charming and very fitting referred in his brief Discogs biography. Although the sound wizard (and multi-instrumentalist, producer, studio owner, etc., etc.) has been active since the 1980s and has moved to San Francisco with the so-called underground lot, he is still a more or less unknown. After all, post other musicians and journalists regularly praises about his (pioneering) work, for example, in terms of his handling of samples and loops.

For the 20th edition of Substantia Innominata that it had actually may be no better occupation. The fine 10inch series of DRONE RECORDS, each limited to 500 copies on colored vinyl and could already boast some high-caliber, last me BRUME (meeting) and COLUMN ONE (meeting) have remained in my memory. Plans include a publication with Zoviet FRANCE. But the drones of Dimuzio, that even appear for the anniversary on a double-10 inch, are among the most powerful I've heard in recent years. They appear to be based on an electric guitar, but what a track is only really listen.

The "sonic alchemist" - another beautiful paraphrase, this time from the BBC - provides four approximately equal lengths 13 to 14 minutes. "Haze" (A1) begins with a rising, vibrating rumble, and sound intensity changes between organic and metal. The atmosphere gets - as so often with good Drones - soon something supernatural, cosmic. The piece looks increasingly dense through several layers applied and sometimes gets when overdriven tug, to the limit of pain. "Dust" (A2) is as much a quiet, spherical, slides buzzing around the room and reminded myself of industrial landscapes and science fiction. Here in between dive on the mentioned Gitarrendrones, with some, but less disturbing undertones. Ambient music for the flight to the sun. "Flash" (B1) is also pretty quiet, but overall again threatening, shortly before the blast. In the Wabern into sawing frequencies, and during the first few minutes of the environment grows darker - a mixture of the first two pieces. Fast voiced similar passages in the second part give a buzz, a choir from space, at the end is a long phase of fanfare-stick slipping away. In "Shale" (B2) surprise the dark, machine drums that exude something soothing and Shamanic. Softer drones hover around the irregular timing, place gradually booming into stuff. From the middle of the piece with a touch border Sound Ambient Dark goes through as sacred.

These four vinyl sides could also titles such as "The Nature of Drones" or "Tele College Knowledge: Drones" wear. With DRONE RECORDS operators STEFAN KNAPPE I have already spoken in detail about Drones in itself, and all facets and variants are at play. Between powerful, tugging, threatening, quiet or sliding - THOMAS Dimuzio pulls out all the stops and shows what he has for a comprehensive understanding of sounds and sound. Very impressive, and - this is for the entire series, but due to the double vinyls and really strong atmosphere here especially - highly recommended. —Michael We (translated from German)