Dino DiMuro - MACHINE

​Dino DiMuro

MACHINE
self-released; 2025

By Matt Jensen

Dino DiMuro’s music has often been labeled with the kind of taglines that sound like dares: “Walt Disney on Acid,” a namecheck away from the far corners of Zappa and Beefheart’s sonic playground. But while those references track—especially in his penchant for satire, structural chaos, and tonal whiplash—they only scratch the surface. DiMuro’s latest release, MACHINE, is a twitchy, homespun patchwork of drum machines, loops, and off-kilter samples that somehow makes room for both sci-fi paranoia and cartoon absurdism.

Built around the mechanical pulse of vintage rhythm boxes and cut-and-paste textures, MACHINE finds DiMuro leaning into the unnatural. The album opens with “The Black Orchestra Part One,” a skeletal introduction that functions more like a test pattern than a proper song—beats snap and stutter in the void, daring you to keep listening. “A Certain Starchiness In His Speech” follows, playing like a warped Peanuts theme left to decompose in a malfunctioning tape deck—jazzy, dissonant, and totally destabilized.

Then there’s “Elmwood’s Irish Trip,” a mutant folk sketch that veers gleefully into Zappa-esque territory, its lopsided charm riding atop fragmented instrumentation and dadaist detours. “The Charming Man,” full of absurd vocal delivery and surreal lyrical jabs, sounds like a lounge singer glitching out mid-performance. Comedy becomes a recurring motif: “Makin’ Fun of Everyone” delivers pure camp through over-the-top vocals and chaotic instrumentation that borders on musical theater for the deranged.

Still, amid all the noise and goofiness, MACHINE lands some surprisingly emotional punches. “Grandpa’s Dark Drawers” and “Skip’s Aquarium” explore grooves and guitar lines with more introspective undertones—the latter being one of the album’s most resonant and conventionally “beautiful” moments. It's a welcome detour, proof that DiMuro’s not just playing mad scientist for its own sake.

Elsewhere, MACHINE spirals. The title track morphs into something queasy and sinister, like getting stuck inside a dying arcade game. “Sad Ronald’s Christmas Packet” teeters between whimsy and dread, while “You’re Pushing Me Into the Arms of the Print Sisters” drags us back to the edge of DiMuro’s Zappa zone. “Circuitree” feels like a B-movie synth score left unfinished on purpose, and “Assells Dub Guitar” closes things out in full meltdown mode—a vision of Las Vegas as imagined from the bottom of a bad trip.

Despite its name, MACHINE is far from cold. DiMuro’s command of texture, structure, and personality makes the record feel oddly human—even when it’s melting. It’s not just a collection of beats and jokes. Beneath the sarcasm and sonic splatter lies a real sense of play, precision, and emotional variance. The drums may be programmed, but the weirdness is entirely alive.

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