Gen Ken Montgomery - Live at Auricular Records

September 29, 1991
Auricular Records

San Francisco, CA

A fantastic live in-store performance by Gen Ken Montgomery at Auricular Records.

Unlike most artists in his field, Montgomery doesn't come from art school circles (be them musical or visual). Untrained, he came to music from enthusiasm. He arrived in New York City in 1978 and soon got involved in the mail art and cassette underground scene, exchanging sound collage tapes with like-minded experimenters around the world.

Considered a pioneer of independent noise/concrete music within the cassette culture, Gen Ken was also founder of the Generator Sound Art Gallery, NYC, (1989-1992) and Generator Sound Art Inc. Possibly one of the nicest fellows in the noise/experimental scene at the time and worked hard to expose his fellow artists as best he could to the world of mail-art, DIY releases, live experimental music and good old noise.

From Francois Couture in All Music Guide:

"In 1989, Montgomery opened the first sound art gallery in New York City, Generator, where he exhibited mail art from his penpals and attempted to stimulate local awareness to the cassette movement. The experience was short-lived, but gave birth to other projects such as the co-founding of the labels Pogus Productions (with Al Margolis) and Generator Sound Art Inc. (with Scott Konzelmann, aka Chop Shop). Meanwhile his art began to attract some international attention, leading to the release of LPs on small German and Spanish labels in the late ‘80s, and more self-produced vinyl and CD artifacts in the ‘90s, including the 7" The Sound of Lamination (1994) which documents Montgomery's work with a laminator, a conceptual sound/installation/interactive project he presented throughout the decade. In 1995 he was even appointed Minister of Lamination by the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, Leif Elggren and Carl Michael von Hausswolff's utopian virtual nation-cum-conceptual art project.

With the rise of sound art in academic circles at the end of the ‘90s, Montgomery began to work more, curating exhibitions and enjoying artists residencies (including one in 1999 at the Spritzenhaus in Hamburg, Germany). The release of Pondfloorsample in 2002 constitutes an encouraging step in the slow recognition of his unique work."

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