Geniuser

Geniuser is a collaboration between Giuseppe De Bellis and Michael Allen. They first met in Copenhagen in the summer of 1991, introduced by a mutual friend they shared a love of music and painting. They kept in touch throughout the years.



Giuseppe was born in southern Italy, in the small fishing town of Taranto, and spent his formative years in this beautiful remote town building his dreams and planning his escape. In his early twenties he moved to Copenhagen and started making and releasing music under various guises.



Michael Allen is London born and bred. A North London boy from the town of Harrow where the Normans built their first church and Henry VIII studied. It was at the tender age of 16 in the summer of 1976 that he saw the Sex Pistols perform at the 100 Club, Oxford Street. The next day he formed a band with his friend Marco and best friend Cliff. This was to be the start of something that he would never finish. He released his first record a year later on Mark Ps label Step Forward with the band 'Models'. Then, later on, Michael went on to form a succesion of bands all of whom ended up releasing material on the English independent label 4AD. The first was the ground breaking group Rema Rema, The Wolfgang Press being the last of these bands. The Wolfgang Press split in 1995.



In the summer of 1998 Giuseppe moved from Copenhagen to London and re-opened communications with Michael and after very little discussion they started to make music together. The Orb had generously given Giuseppe and Michael the loan of their studio in Victoria. They were holed up in the studio for some six months writing material looking to fuse their very different influences into something fresh and worthwhile. The fruit of their labour are the albums entitled Mud Black in 2005 and Press/Delete in 2009 under the project name Geniuser.