Gen Ken Montgomery

Mixed up in cassette underground, Gen Ken Montgomery is a creator, maker, presenter, and all-around advocate of sound artwork since. His function focuses mostly around the rediscovery or recontextualization of home sounds, noises that surround us inside our everyday living, from domestic pets and snorers to radiators and electric appliances. He’s also known for sound installations where in fact the audience is usually blindfolded, as well as for shows including many pre-recorded cassettes or CDs becoming played back concurrently through an selection of loudspeakers. His discography is made up mostly of extremely limited-edition albums and handmade audio items. The label XI released a thorough and more broadly available two-CD retrospective of his function in 2002 beneath the name Pondfloorsample. Unlike many performers in his field, Montgomery doesn’t result from artwork college circles (end up being they musical or visible). Untrained, he found music from passion. He found its way to NEW YORK in 1978 and shortly got mixed up in mail artwork and cassette underground picture, exchanging sound collage tapes with like-minded experimenters all over the world. Even while he sang in a fresh influx duo with Michael Zodorzny, but his developing desire for the functions of John Cage and audio artwork steadily dragged him from pop music. He self-released his initial cassette in 1981, Gen Ken & Devices. The “Gen” in his name originated from a typo, as would the moniker “egnekn” which he began to make use of in 1994. In 1989, Montgomery opened up the initial audio memorial in NEW YORK, Generator, where he exhibited email artwork from his pencil pals and attemptedto stimulate local recognition towards the cassette motion. The knowledge was short-lived, but provided birth to various other projects like the co-founding of labels Pogus Productions (with Al Margolis) and Generator Sound Artwork Inc. (with Scott Konzelmann, aka Chop Store). In the meantime, his artwork begun to attract some worldwide attention, resulting in the discharge of LPs on little German and Spanish brands in the past due ‘80s, and even more self-produced vinyl fabric and Compact disc artifacts in the ‘90s, like the 7″ The Sound of Lamination (1994) which docs Montgomery’s utilize a laminator, a conceptual audio/set up/interactive task he presented through the entire 10 years. In 1995 he was also appointed Minister of Lamination with the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, Leif Elggren and Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s utopian digital nation-cum-conceptual artwork project. Using the rise of audio artwork in educational circles by the end from the ‘90s, Montgomery begun to function even more, curating exhibitions and experiencing performers residencies (including one in 1999 on the Spritzenhaus in Hamburg, Germany). The discharge of Pondfloorsample in 2002 constitutes an stimulating part of the slow reputation of his exclusive function.