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The Sound Projector Review: Live at Generator

Fab solo American noisenik whomps it up live with his vats of electric junk. You need more records by Dimuzio so why not acquire this one - 12 years old and a rare vintage too. Amazingly, for something with such a masterly and convincing delivery, this is Dimuzio's first ever solo concert. Gen Ken Montgomery recorded it at his Generator sound gallery concern in New York in March 1990, but the history of it goes back to the 1980s, Dimuzio's earlier experiments, and Gen Ken's interest in hearing them (indeed in hearing as much weird music as he possibly could, mostly on cassettes, which is how the scene throve back then). The Generations Unlimited label put out the first Dimuzio LP Headlock in 1989 - since reissued on CD by ReR, but still tough to find. 'It was impossible to tell from his recordings how he was making all that sound,' muses Gen Ken. That still applies when you listen to this sprawling chaos on record, and even reading through the list of equipment - lots of synths, a digital delay unit and a delay system, plus sampling keyboards and a mixing board - leave you little the wiser. Naturally, what's important is the man in the driving seat who has the expertise to make all this gear leap into action. With his bangs, buzzes, echoes, crackling, and metallic shivering timbers, Dimuzio conveys unearthly grandeur, a sense of rapid travel and movement, a multitude of foreign voices blending into a babel, foreboding buildings, flashing lights, mountains of concrete and clay formed into terrifying ziggurats - all the experiences of modern city life in fact, and what greater city to depict in this regard than NYC? Dimuzio also conveys excitement, meeting bizarre strangers, out-of-control street parties, ingesting hallucinogenic drugs and excessive amounts of alcohol, and witnessing unexpected fatalities in traffic. A good companion piece to Gen Ken's (calmer) recording captured from his apartment window (see the Environmental Section); take the two together to form a coherent view of modern urban life. —Ed Pinsent