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monk style or screamalan courtis and thomas dimuzio
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reviews “What at the start might have been the same material, is no longer at the end of the trail; two quite opposing pieces, but it works wonderful.” —Vital Weekly “...they channel their decade-long experience of creating liberated noise into well-ordered tracks...” —Groove DE Vital Weekly Of an entirely different nature is the work composed by Thomas Dimuzio and Alan Courtis. Well, works actually, as each composed their piece of music, using source material by other. Dimuzio has been around for quite some years now with his own fine brand of musique concrete, using analogue and digital means. Courtis is also active for many years, just a bit younger I guess and his tools of trade are perhaps more to be found in the analogue domain or even lo-fi; he’s the punk rocker of musique concrete, I guess. He’s also way more active when it comes to releasing music, although not all reaches this desk; the same of which can be said from Dimuzio I guess, except that he also releases a lot less music. In their approaches to the material of the other there is not much difference I should think. Much seem to lie in altering the sounds and then using a computer to mix them. The difference lies in the result. Whereas Dimuzio opts for a more delicate outcome and a collage approach with some swift montage techniques, is the interest of Courtis going towards a sonic overload of the material in the first half of the piece and something very subdued in the second half of the piece. Courtis interest is more towards the radical dynamical opposites and Dimuzio uses it less radical. He’s more the storyteller, meandering about but also adding a few elements of surprise in here. Dimuzio creates dense patterns; Courtis reduces them to just a few layers. What at the start might have been the same material, is no longer at the end of the trail; two quite opposing pieces, but it works wonderful. Lovely green vinyl also and no doubt limited; for those who care about that.—Frans de Waard Groove DE Even the ambient pages of Ambient, such as academic electroacoustics or Free Improv, are rounder in the duo than alone. Monk Style Or Scream ( Monotype ), the collaborative project of experimental veterans Thomas Dimuzio & Anla Courtis , both of whom have an almost unmanageable back catalog, draws heavily from the sources of free improvisation. On their collaborative album, they channel their decade-long experience of creating liberated noise into well-ordered tracks, bringing organ drones and feedback-filled electric guitars together into a psychedelic flow that is only occasionally broken by turbulence and dangerous shoals.—Frank P. Eckert |