play | buy
reviews
... an intelligent vocabulary of power, impulse,
velocity and rhythm. The Wire
Tie yourself into your chair and travel within
Dimuzio's strange and chilling netherworld... Metamorphic
Journeyman
Dark and forboding, with a great "presense"
LOUDEN makes for fascinating listening. Audion
The Wire
Louden remasters original cassette releases from 1987
and 88 (Delineation of Perspective and Flux) exploring noise processes
not just as sublime tumult (although "Of Vast and Barren, Rotting
Wastelands" has an undeniable magnitude) but through a more abstract
analysis of process and technique. "Self-Proclaimed Contention (Without
Variation)", using bass, microphone, processors and mixer, is a series
of dynamic build-ups segued over each other: an endless take-off that
conveys the velvet thunder of intergalactic spacecraft rather than Industrial
screaming metal. Dimuzio's equipment includes samplers, analogue synths,
E-bow, and tape recorder - the mixture of technical systems generating
an intelligent vocabulary of power, impulse, velocity and rhythm. A nice
foray into the experiential complexities of modernism. Matt ffyche
Metamorphic Journeyman
Dimuzio uses the latest digital technology to create
his up-to-the-minute concrete collages. In the past he's worked with people
like Chris Cutler, Tom Cora, John Wiggins & Due Process. His sound
is a curious combination of Industrial noise and almost film soundtrack-like
composition. Immediate comparisons to the likes of Lull spring to mind,
but where Mick Harris'' project is dark & minimal, this seethes with
layer-upon-layer of metal, railway yard ambience, snatched voice, bowed
guitar, delay feedback, synthetic strings and an unlimited supply of found
sounds which go together curiously well. There are few fixed points of
composition - it's more a languid journey through the familiar made alien.
Dimuzio seems to dehumanise those things we take for granted, then compile
them in a reorganised, re-humanised way. It's grey, muddy, indistinct
territory - as layered, coloured & textured as striated rock formations
through which we can find, through accident maybe or calculated design,
glimpses of intriguing fossils or maybe even the glint of some gemstone.
A lot of this reminds me not only of Jerry Goldsmith's music for the original
'Alien' soundtrack (which was later rehashed by Jack Horner for sundry
other films, but never as well), but of the music Antonym created back
in the early 80s (albeit a more stripped-down, minimal version). Tie yourself
into your chair and travel within Dimuzio's strange and chilling netherworld
- it's worth the journey, although I can't guarantee you'll retain your
sanity. Antony Burnham
Audion
Thomas is not so much a unique dabbler in sound construction,
though he is one of the most interesting working in this field at the
moment, in the wake of Jim O'Rouke, Zoviet France, Hafler Trio, et al.
LOUDEN is actually an anthology of older recordings from 1987 and 1989
(including four tracks from an old Generations Unlimited release) and
it largely involves great sliding (forwards, backwards, sideways?) masses
of sound, loops, wedges of instrumental textures, screeching metal, machines
and all sorts of indescribable unfathomable sonic sources. Dark and forboding,
with a great "presense" LOUDEN makes for fascinating listening.
Alan Freeman
|