Downtown Music Gallery Review: Uncertain Symmetry

New York's David Lee Myers and San Francisco's Thomas Dimuzio shared a stage at Tonic in New York City in March 2001. It was Myers' first publicperformance in ten years, since he was known as Arcane Device and invented a feedback machine. This collaboration immediately sparked a year long regenerative process. The ensuing year-long project actually picks up where a paused 1991 collaboration for the Generations Unlimited label left off. Myers' first round of source material represented a veritable sound library of feedback tones, texture and contours for Dimuzio to compose from. The structures Dimuzio created, along with several tracks of feedback-induced source sound (recorded for their project ten years prior) were sent back to Myers for additional manipulation and arangement; the result of this phase became the first section of their new effort. A second stage involved Myers sending material (from a rehearsal for an upcoming performance) to Dimuzio, who sliced, diced and reworked the sounds into a series of in-depth sonic beds, eventually returning the mixes, along with a new disc of live-sampled feedback, to Myers who reworked and honed them into the second half of the album. The product of these manipulations is titled Uncertain Symmetry, the result of a bi-coastal ping-ponging which is an even balance between the two artists--symmetrical-- but which the specific contributions from each can no longer be determined. —Bruce Gallanter