Gen Ken Montgomery

These two discs represent some of Gen Ken Montgomery's sound art and compositional work from 1981-2001. Pondfloorsample is a collection of sonic explorations utilizing common devices meant to hold something other than sound. As with much of his sound work, the sonic material contains many sounds of everyday life. Having composed extensively for multi-channels, Pondfloorsample was specifically designed as a stereo audio piece enabling Montgomery to reach a larger audience.
"His work always begins with listening to the world. He works within processes, defining a set of conditions by which a piece will unfold itself. Sometimes he takes the familiar - sounds of icebreakers, radiators, laminators, egg slicers, bath drains, etc. - amplifying their familiarity, all the time asking us to hear the world a little differently. Other times he constructs a vapor of mesmerizing sound that is entirely disassociated with things that you know or instruments that can be visualized. These are sounds that you can see. He has a Cagian appreciation of ambient noise.
"Although never a formal "student" of the academic "New York School" - the tradition of Cage and Tudor followed by Lucier, Behrman, Mumma, Collins, Kuivila, DeMarinis and others - he is an influential artist in this field. He created his own school, so to speak, of do-it-yourself electronics, assimilating the works of the aforementioned artists and complementing them with his own inside experience of New York performance music. And then there is the bridge he makes to European techno roots; his longtime friendship with Conrad Schnitzler and frequent audio projects for German audiences and galleries. He listens, assimilates, creates, and paints new experiences with sound." - Thom Holmes (from the liner notes)