Thomas Dimuzio: SLEW TEW—A Compilation of Compilation Tracks 2003–2017 (review)

Digital download, 2020, available from Bandcamp; www.thomasdimuzio.bandcamp.com. Limited run compact discs are forthcoming.

In certain circles, San Francisco– based composer, improviser, sound designer, and engineer Thomas Dimuzio is a well-known pioneer in experimental electroacoustic techniques. Since the 1980s his work has demonstrated that he is no one-trick pony when it comes to his tools. Dimuzio has used modular synthesizers, modified bicycles, circuit bent toys, field recordings, resonating water pipes, loops, shortwave radios, and intercepted signal feeds from his collaborators to create music in ambient, noise, and post-techno styles. As a sound designer, he has worked with synthesizer and processor manufacturers including Kurzweil, Lexicon, and OSC to produce custom presets and sample libraries, and has played a key role in Avid's Pro Tools HD recording system. He also owns and runs Gench Studios, where much of his music is created and mastered, as well as albums by Negativland, AMM, Doctor Nerve, GG Allin, Fred Frith, and Nels Cline. It is fair to say that Dimuzio represents the electroacoustic version of an auteur.

On 26 March 2020, in the thick of the global pandemic, Dimuzio released Slew Tewon Bandcamp. There is also a forthcoming, limited edition, compact disc of the same material. All of the works in this collection were previously released on various labels between 2003 and 2017. As such, it serves as a kind of retrospective of Dimuzio's work. Of the 14 pieces, half were recorded live. The other half were created and mixed in the composer's studio. The 14 tracks range in length from 2.5 minutes to a little over 13 minutes. True to form, the composer utilized a Buchla analog synthesizer, field recordings, bottle recycling machine, feedback, piano, and an electric guitar to create the work on Slew Tew.

The first piece from this collection, Scanters, uses the highly processed sounds of a bottle recycling machine to create a texture teeming with repetitive, industrial, machinelike sounds, sounding like a newspaper pressroom. The texture sounds like repetitive simple amplitude modulation combined with extremely short loops. This runs unabated throughout much of the piece, conjuring up a distinct sense of place, albeit with a degree of ambiguity if you did not know what Dimuzio used for his sound source. During the last third of the piece the composer presents a long and effective fadeout. Overall, especially considering its short, 3-minute duration, Scanterscomes across as a torso extracted from a longer composition.

Arc of the Fallen Arch, the second piece from this collection, is a good example of a work whose title describes the formal plan for the piece, while at the same time serving poetic function. To create this piece Dimuzio used crisp, distinctive, analog sounds from a Buchla synthesizer. Various layers of material collide, producing a complex, pulsating texture. These sounds, as a collection, gradually move up, and then back down, in pitch, tracing an inverted-U or arch-shaped trajectory. The highest point in this process comes exactly halfway through the piece.

The next piece, titled NG Cycles (If I Had a Stomach Pump), begins with a reversed sample followed by soft, menacing, dissonant resonance formed by a composite piano, pump, and nasogastric tube sound. The piano portion of this fused sound is used again and again during the piece as a formal marker. Each section features what can be described as aperiodic percussive sounds, resembling those found in a churning stomach. These are combined with subtle, squishy sounds likely produced from recycled noise. At about 3:55 another section begins, characterized by lowfrequency drum, or stretched skin, tones. Identifying whether the piece was taken from a live or studio performance is difficult to determine because it contains processing and spatial aspects of both. Gradually, the piece dissipates, followed by a long fadeout at the end.

Abject Lightbegins with a slowly evolving crescendo. As it becomes louder, more and more upper partials are added to the composite sound. This time-stretched texture sounds like it...