Kyle Bobby Dunn
Encyclopedia
Kyle Bobby Dunn is a composer
, arranger, and live performer of modern and neo-classical based drone music
. He has performed in live and exclusive outdoor settings, including Banff National Park
, since 2000 and has released music on various international recording labels.
His work has been described as "compositions that are patience incarnate." His sounds "encourage an emotional response even as its seemingly infinite, creeping swirl and hum threatens to numb. A difficult feat."
The austere, tempered tonal shifts featured in many of his compositions subtly echo the work of minimalist forerunners like Morton Feldman
and LaMonte Young. At the same time Dunn occasionally intersperses quaint, almost chamberal touches which evoke more traditionally classical sources.
, Canada and raised for several years in Calgary
, Alberta
. He began recording piano music and minimal guitar works on tape, and made soundtrack scores for homemade films he wrote and directed while attending Catholic school in Lake Bonavista, Calgary. He moved with his family to Greensboro, North Carolina
in the summer of 2000 and began seriously performing and recording there under various aliases, most notably with the ensemble Subtract by Two.
In high school he began writing and recording his first album Music for Medication, with local sound engineer Alex Chesney from the group, Ashrae Fax. The album was recorded directly to ADAT
and VHS
tapes to retain a warm fuzzy fidelity to pay homage to Dunn's love of films on cassette.
The album was self-released on a CD-R
in late 2002 and limited to 300 copies. The album was reissued as a compact disc in 2005 by This Generation Tapes, an indie
label in Los Angeles.
He has mentioned in interviews a large admiration for classical and soundtrack composers including Arvo Pärt
, Valentin Silvestrov
, John Williams
, Ennio Morricone
and Jerry Fielding
, yet his own music often exhibits a more quiet, minimalist, and droning nature that is often compared to ambient contemporary musicians William Basinski
, Brian Eno
and Stars of the Lid
.
In 2006, Kning Disk in Sweden
issued the album Six Cognitive Works on compact disc. It included some of his most minimal and most harsh pieces available. He began traveling and performing more regularly in North America around this time and after taking a pilgrimage to record new music in Canada, he moved to and has lived in Brooklyn since 2007.
label in 2008 that received critical acclaim in many notable underground music publications. The album covered several years of his earliest compositional works, mainly for strings and piano, although still tinted with his specialized dronology.
In 2009, Brooklyn label Moodgadget
approached him about releasing music of a more processed and guitar based nature that also included a more electronic element (working for the general aesthetics of the label) and the 5-track mini-album Fervency was released as a digital download only.
In early 2010, he re-released the Fervency material within a long form album that filled a double compact disc
set of five years worth of his music. The album, A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn
, arrived on the UK based label Low Point, and has been extensively praised in music journalism and considered a 'deeply affecting' work by The New York Times
and 'his most definitive statement so far,' by Pitchforkmedia.
Dunn released Ways of Meaning
in 2011 on Buffalo, New York
imprint, Desire Path Recordings, to unanimously positive reception. The Huffington Post
's Daniel Kushner wrote, "Dunn presents the listener with sounds that seemingly, have no beginning, nor any end. There are not so much melodies, in the conventional sense -- but rather an economical assemblage of tones, which linger in the air like the quivering brush strokes in an Impressionist still life."
Other Releases
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, arranger, and live performer of modern and neo-classical based drone music
Drone music
Drone music is a minimalist musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics...
. He has performed in live and exclusive outdoor settings, including Banff National Park
Banff National Park
Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885 in the Rocky Mountains. The park, located 110–180 kilometres west of Calgary in the province of Alberta, encompasses of mountainous terrain, with numerous glaciers and ice fields, dense coniferous forest, and alpine...
, since 2000 and has released music on various international recording labels.
His work has been described as "compositions that are patience incarnate." His sounds "encourage an emotional response even as its seemingly infinite, creeping swirl and hum threatens to numb. A difficult feat."
The austere, tempered tonal shifts featured in many of his compositions subtly echo the work of minimalist forerunners like Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...
and LaMonte Young. At the same time Dunn occasionally intersperses quaint, almost chamberal touches which evoke more traditionally classical sources.
Musical career
Dunn was born outside of TorontoToronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Canada and raised for several years in Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
, Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
. He began recording piano music and minimal guitar works on tape, and made soundtrack scores for homemade films he wrote and directed while attending Catholic school in Lake Bonavista, Calgary. He moved with his family to Greensboro, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
in the summer of 2000 and began seriously performing and recording there under various aliases, most notably with the ensemble Subtract by Two.
In high school he began writing and recording his first album Music for Medication, with local sound engineer Alex Chesney from the group, Ashrae Fax. The album was recorded directly to ADAT
ADAT
Alesis Digital Audio Tape or ADAT is a magnetic tape format used for the simultaneous digital recording of eight analog audio or digital audio tracks at once, onto a Super VHS tape that is used by consumer VCRs.- History :...
and VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
tapes to retain a warm fuzzy fidelity to pay homage to Dunn's love of films on cassette.
The album was self-released on a CD-R
CD-R
A CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....
in late 2002 and limited to 300 copies. The album was reissued as a compact disc in 2005 by This Generation Tapes, an indie
Independent record label
An independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels. A great number of bands and musical acts begin on independent labels.-Overview:...
label in Los Angeles.
He has mentioned in interviews a large admiration for classical and soundtrack composers including Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...
, Valentin Silvestrov
Valentin Silvestrov
Valentyn Vasylyovych Sylvestrov is a Ukrainian pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.-Education:Sylvestrov began private music lessons at age 15...
, John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
, Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
and Jerry Fielding
Jerry Fielding
Jerry Fielding was an American radio, record, film and television composer, conductor, and musical director.-Childhood and education:...
, yet his own music often exhibits a more quiet, minimalist, and droning nature that is often compared to ambient contemporary musicians William Basinski
William Basinski
William Basinski is a United States avant-garde composer of ambient music via tape music and process music. Basinski is also a clarinetist, saxophonist, sound artist, and video artist...
, Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
and Stars of the Lid
Stars of the Lid
Stars of the Lid is a duo specializing in drone-based ambient music. They list among their influences minimalist and electronic composers such as Arvo Pärt, Zbigniew Preisner, Gavin Bryars, and Henryk Górecki, as well as Talk Talk , post-rock artists Labradford, and ambient innovator Brian...
.
In 2006, Kning Disk in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
issued the album Six Cognitive Works on compact disc. It included some of his most minimal and most harsh pieces available. He began traveling and performing more regularly in North America around this time and after taking a pilgrimage to record new music in Canada, he moved to and has lived in Brooklyn since 2007.
Recent works
He released what he has referred to as his 'first proper full length' album, Fragments & Compositions of Kyle Bobby Dunn, on Boston's SedimentalSedimental
Sedimental is an independent recording label based in Greenfield, Massachusetts releasing mainly experimental, sound art, noise, free jazz, avant garde and drone music. It began 16 years ago in Austin, Texas with the first album from ambient-drone group Stars of the Lid and their debut Music for...
label in 2008 that received critical acclaim in many notable underground music publications. The album covered several years of his earliest compositional works, mainly for strings and piano, although still tinted with his specialized dronology.
In 2009, Brooklyn label Moodgadget
Moodgadget
Moodgadget is an independent electronic music label, founded in 2004 in Ann Arbor, Michigan by Jakub Marek Alexander and Adam E. Hunt, with the mission statement "Exposing the diversity in electronically made music." They started the label with the goal of popularizing their opinion that electronic...
approached him about releasing music of a more processed and guitar based nature that also included a more electronic element (working for the general aesthetics of the label) and the 5-track mini-album Fervency was released as a digital download only.
In early 2010, he re-released the Fervency material within a long form album that filled a double compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
set of five years worth of his music. The album, A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn
A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn
A Young Person's Guide is a double album release from Canadian composer Kyle Bobby Dunn. It was recorded over a period of six years in Greensboro, North Carolina, Calgary, Alberta, Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan, and parts of New York and New Jersey....
, arrived on the UK based label Low Point, and has been extensively praised in music journalism and considered a 'deeply affecting' work by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and 'his most definitive statement so far,' by Pitchforkmedia.
Dunn released Ways of Meaning
Ways of Meaning
Ways of Meaning is a full length vinyl, digital download and art edition album from Canadian composer Kyle Bobby Dunn. It was recorded at Bunce Cake studios in Brooklyn by the composer in 2010...
in 2011 on Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
imprint, Desire Path Recordings, to unanimously positive reception. The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
's Daniel Kushner wrote, "Dunn presents the listener with sounds that seemingly, have no beginning, nor any end. There are not so much melodies, in the conventional sense -- but rather an economical assemblage of tones, which linger in the air like the quivering brush strokes in an Impressionist still life."
Discography
Full Length Releases- Music for Medication (Ltd. CDR 2002, Housing)
- Music for Medication (CD Reissue 2005, This Generation Tapes)
- Applications for Guitar (Ltd. CDR 2006, Housing)
- Fragments & Compositions of (CD 2008, SedimentalSedimentalSedimental is an independent recording label based in Greenfield, Massachusetts releasing mainly experimental, sound art, noise, free jazz, avant garde and drone music. It began 16 years ago in Austin, Texas with the first album from ambient-drone group Stars of the Lid and their debut Music for...
) - A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby DunnA Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby DunnA Young Person's Guide is a double album release from Canadian composer Kyle Bobby Dunn. It was recorded over a period of six years in Greensboro, North Carolina, Calgary, Alberta, Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan, and parts of New York and New Jersey....
(2xCD 2010, Low Point) - Ways of MeaningWays of MeaningWays of Meaning is a full length vinyl, digital download and art edition album from Canadian composer Kyle Bobby Dunn. It was recorded at Bunce Cake studios in Brooklyn by the composer in 2010...
(LP, Digital 2011, Desire Path Recordings)
Other Releases
- Expanse at Low Levels (Digital Compilation 2007, MoodgadgetMoodgadgetMoodgadget is an independent electronic music label, founded in 2004 in Ann Arbor, Michigan by Jakub Marek Alexander and Adam E. Hunt, with the mission statement "Exposing the diversity in electronically made music." They started the label with the goal of popularizing their opinion that electronic...
) - You Made Me Realise (Ltd. Cassette 2005, Housing)
- Six Cognitive Works (Ltd. CDR/FLAC 2007, Kning Disk)
- Fervency (File/FLAC 2009, MoodgadgetMoodgadgetMoodgadget is an independent electronic music label, founded in 2004 in Ann Arbor, Michigan by Jakub Marek Alexander and Adam E. Hunt, with the mission statement "Exposing the diversity in electronically made music." They started the label with the goal of popularizing their opinion that electronic...
) - Rural Route No. 2 (Ltd. CDR 2010, Standard Form)
- Pour les Octaves (Ltd. Cassette 2010, Peasant Magik)
- SMM: Context (CD, LP, Digital Compilation 2011, Ghostly InternationalGhostly InternationalGhostly International is an American independent record label. Chief artists include Matthew Dear, Dabrye , Mobius Band, and Skeletons & The Girl-Faced Boys, all of which are innovative contributors to the world of music....
)
External links
- Kyle Bobby Dunn on FacebookFacebookFacebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
- Artist Page at MyspaceMyspaceMyspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
- Sedimental Records — label press on "Fragements & Compositons of Kyle Bobby Dunn"
- Kyle Bobby Dunn Interview — at Future Sequence website
- Low Point Records — label press release of "A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn"
- Review & Interview — with Kailas Elmer at Trebuchet
- Interview — with Tobias Fischer at Tokafi
- Interview — with Crawford Philleo at Tome
- Interview — with the Silent Ballet