midREM by Dimmer

DIMMER's fourth album tells you right from the start where it manifests from, 'midREM'. Continuing the duo's work in live sampling, processing, feedback, looping by thomas dimuzio and tape manipulation and processing by joseph hammer - the sound crafted feels more substantial than a symbolic representation of dream sleep; it feels like hearing dreams themselves. DIMMER's most recent albums were on ISOUNDERSCORE and LA Free Music Society. Joseph Hammer is also a member of LAFMS. Thomas Dimuzio works in mastering with acts such as Clipping and Matmos.

"Dimmer has a knack for disorientation. On their tolling, twilit 2007 debut The Shining PathI , the Californian duo made misperception their mantra, with Los Angeles sound artist Joseph Hammer manipulating, looping and processing San Francisco based Thomas Dimuzio’s modular synthesizer washes and samples into an otherworldly ambient manna.

While 2009’s Remissions pivoted towards gristly sweeps of electronic feedback and static, 2012’s Ascent insisted upon a jittery, effect-splattered vertigo, all collapsed chordal moans and desolate dread. Even as headphones-equipped witnesses, it can be difficult to orient ourselves amid this fathomless, restive music, falsely placid and Halloween-séance appropriate.

That the art and packaging for midREM designed by Brian Miller and Margot Padilla, evoke the freewheeling mystery and mysticism of mid-2000s Excepter LP sleeves may be an entirely coincidental twist of fate; the accompanying contents suggest that maybe it isn’t. Hammer and Dimuzio turn in four extended ooze-clinics, slippery, bubbling over, primordial — and It’s somehow a surprise, every time, how quickly and easily a listener is lost in the digital surf. “Phase III - Delta Cycles (Light To Deep)” sounds by turns like an incomprehensible orchestra tuning up and a slow-motion electro-magnetic pulse disguised as a thrumming glitch fanfare. “Phase II - Falling Higher (Sleep Spindles)”, a nauseated vortex of warps, twist, drafts and zooms, exists on a higher anxiety plane. It’s as though someone starved a littler of kittens, recorded their yowls and mixed the results, jury-rigging in a few bars of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” near the end for good measure.

A sputtering grind marks “Phase IV - midREM (Paradox Of Paralysis)” which, with its dank-dungeon vibe and psychedelic, entropic synth play, brings The Spiritual Switchboard and Telecult Powers to mind; no velocity asked, and none given — at least until the song seems to steer into an active car wash. A misshapen grooves does assert itself as “Phase I - Black Light (Hypnagogic Hallucinations)” gets going, but it’s twitchy, a glow stick macramé of shortwave, echo and balloon animal tonalities, slouching idly towards daybreak." —Raymond Cummings/The Wire

DIMMER is a duo comprising live sampling pioneer Thomas Dimuzio and tape-loop maestro Joseph Hammer. Captivating audiences with their dark explorations of sound, Dimmer specializes in a symbiotic sound process as they continually loop, reloop, sample and resample within an interactive feedback circuit linking both artists.