Kyle Bobby Dunn
Kyle Bobby Dunn (born Kyle Robert Dunn, 1986, in Toronto, Ontario) is a neo-minimalist, neoclassicist composer, sound and visual artist, and filmmaker. He performs his works in various live settings, including outdoor environments, with often diverse arrangements, dynamics, and performance methods. Since 2006, he has released his musics on various international record labels.
Early Works & History
Dunn was born in Ontario, Canada where he lived until 1991 when his family relocated to Calgary, Alberta. Dunn spent his early adolescence in Catholic school, making amateur films with video and Hi8 cameras. His films were influenced by great interpersonal conflicts and human condition based struggles that Dunn experienced at a young age. His films were viewed negatively in the Catholic community in which he lived, due to the explicit sexual and disturbing nature of their content. Dunn has spoken of first hearing music he enjoyed during the writing process of his first films. He claims he was 13 years old when his first musical interests developed, including Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, Japanese noise artist Merzbow, No Wave band DNA, and Texan outsider Jandek. He was also interested in indie pop music at this time, and classical musics like J.S. Bach, Hilliard Ensemble, and Luigi Cherubini.
His own musical work began with scoring sound and music for his own films. This was done within meager tape recording environments, using various household objects, untuned string instruments, and keyboards. He was known to recruit neighbors, fellow students, and family members for his films production and music help. The films ranged from 10 minute shorts to 3 hour epics. A certain film titled, Language Grab Legacy, took Dunn nearly 2 years to complete and had a rumored 324 page screenplay. Aside from an obsession with film and music in his pre-adolescence, Dunn was found studying piano and poetry and taking long excursions in Alberta's desolate wildernesses.
In 2000, Dunn moved to Greensboro, North Carolina for high school. He studied media sciences, performance art, and video editing and became more interested in his lack of knowledge with music and the personal, versatile, and cost-effective means of expression with music over filmmaking. He began playing piano at the Philip J. Weaver Academy in downtown Greensboro which exhibited a slow, meandering and melancholy characteristic.
The name "Kyle Bobby Dunn" was given to him by his fellow students in high school at age 16 and stuck after a musician friend continued to call him by it in Greensboro. He recorded his first album in 2002, Music for Medication, with electric guitar, piano, and keyboard onto ADAT tape. He performed in rough spaces, house shows, local clubs, and venues with little interest or satisfaction. He continued to seek new avenues for a music he couldn't sell himself very easily on. Dunn has stated in many interviews that the "impact of the personal fidelity involved in the compositions is what drives me and drags me at the same time."
His first release was under the title, Subtract by Two: Agoniser Ecrire, in 2004. Dunn recorded the album in early 2003, over a period of several weeks using a digital video camera and Røde microphone. A recording Dunn played solely piano on, with appearances by musicians that were recruited by Dunn while he walked around obsessively at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's music hall for several months. The music was of a very dreary, desolate, and existential nature and had failed in Dunn's mind to come out the right way. A certain depression ensued and Dunn felt extremely disenchanted with his life in North Carolina.
Compositional Process & Technique
Dunn moved back to Toronto, Ontario in 2004 where he fell ill and developed type one diabetes in the fall of that year while back in North Carolina at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital. He recorded very slowly for the following two years. Mostly guitar works that were strung through different homemade pitch, patch, and process arrangements using unorthodox playing and recording methods. He frequented Guilford College and its surrounding acreage of woods and meadows. His chance meetings with string players or classically trained musicians happened often during his walks through campus and while drinking preposterous amounts of coffee. He composed and arranged works for violin, viola, cello, piano, organ, oscillator, room hum, trombone, trumpet, oboe, flugelhorn, and radio.
Dunn's compositions relied heavily on space, performer, and his own intuition. It was around this time Dunn discovered graphic notation, aleatoric music, and process music. His work with string players and classically trained musicians involved dictation of note and chord progressions that would be captured as short excerpts and stitched together with computer software. Dunn also began studying musicology and engaged heavily into the works of Morton Feldman.
His work in live performances quietened down over the year of 2005 and most of 2006. However, he traveled extensively throughout the eastern U.S. coast and settled at various art centers and friends homes in New York and New Jersey.
For scattered reasons, Dunn returned to Alberta in 2006. He refined some guitar works, began his own CD-R label, Housing, and gave lectures and performances at The Alberta College of Art & Design, Cantos Music Foundation, and the Banff Center for the Arts. Swedish label, Kning Disk, released his Six Cognitive Works album in summer of 2007 alongside a reissue of his first album, Music for Medication, on Los Angeles based label, This Generation Tapes.
He moved to the borough of Brooklyn in New York City in late 2007. After years of meticulous layering, processing, arranging, and recording, Dunn felt his first proper release was with Sedimental Records in 2008, simply titled, Fragments & Compositions of Kyle Bobby Dunn. The album received favorable response and acclaim from printed and web based publications.
In early 2009, Brooklyn based record label, Moodgadget, released Dunn's dated guitar compositions from his 2006 period. The 'Fervency' album was released digitally on the iTunes shop, Boomkat, and throughout the internet.
Dunn's music is associated within avant-garde realms, electronic, drone, neoclassical, and minimalist tagging, but he has spoken of his music in less-than simpler terms and even applied pop and rock classifications to describe his music. Since 2005, Dunn has performed extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada and involved himself in more collaborative ventures and elaborated largely on his intuitive compositional methods.
Partial Discography
- You Made Me Realise Cassette (2005, Housing)
- Applications for Guitar CDr (2006, Housing)
- Music for Medication CD (2007, This Generation Tapes)
- Six Cognitive Works CD (2007, Kning Disk)
- Fragments & Compositions of Kyle Bobby Dunn CD (2008, Sedimental Records)
- Fervency MP3/ FLAC (2009, Moodgadget)
External Links
Kyle Bobby Dunn MySpace Page Discogs Page Sedimental Records Website
Kyle Bobby Dunn
Kyle Bobby Dunn (born Kyle Robert Dunn, 1986, in Toronto, Ontario) is a neo-minimalist, neoclassicist composer, sound and visual artist, and filmmaker. He performs his works in various live settings, including outdoor environments, with often diverse arrangements, dynamics, and performance methods. Since 2006, he has released his musics on various international record labels.
Early Works & History
Dunn was born in Ontario, Canada where he lived until 1991 when his family relocated to Calgary, Alberta. Dunn spent his early adolescence in Catholic school, making amateur films with video and Hi8 cameras. His films were influenced by great interpersonal conflicts and human condition based struggles that Dunn experienced at a young age. His films were viewed negatively in the Catholic community in which he lived, due to the explicit sexual and disturbing nature of their content. Dunn has spoken of first hearing music he enjoyed during the writing process of his first films. He claims he was 13 years old when his first musical interests developed, including Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, Japanese noise artist Merzbow, No Wave band DNA, and Texan outsider Jandek. He was also interested in indie pop music at this time, and classical musics like J.S. Bach, Hilliard Ensemble, and Luigi Cherubini.
His own musical work began with scoring sound and music for his own films. This was done within meager tape recording environments, using various household objects, untuned string instruments, and keyboards. He was known to recruit neighbors, fellow students, and family members for his films production and music help. The films ranged from 10 minute shorts to 3 hour epics. A certain film titled, Language Grab Legacy, took Dunn nearly 2 years to complete and had a rumored 324 page screenplay. Aside from an obsession with film and music in his pre-adolescence, Dunn was found studying piano and poetry and taking long excursions in Alberta's desolate wildernesses.
In 2000, Dunn moved to Greensboro, North Carolina for high school. He studied media sciences, performance art, and video editing and became more interested in his lack of knowledge with music and the personal, versatile, and cost-effective means of expression with music over filmmaking. He began playing piano at the Philip J. Weaver Academy in downtown Greensboro which exhibited a slow, meandering and melancholy characteristic.
The name "Kyle Bobby Dunn" was given to him by his fellow students in high school at age 16 and stuck after a musician friend continued to call him by it in Greensboro. He recorded his first album in 2002, Music for Medication, with electric guitar, piano, and keyboard onto ADAT tape. He performed in rough spaces, house shows, local clubs, and venues with little interest or satisfaction. He continued to seek new avenues for a music he couldn't sell himself very easily on. Dunn has stated in many interviews that the "impact of the personal fidelity involved in the compositions is what drives me and drags me at the same time."
His first release was under the title, Subtract by Two: Agoniser Ecrire, in 2004. Dunn recorded the album in early 2003, over a period of several weeks using a digital video camera and Røde microphone. A recording Dunn played solely piano on, with appearances by musicians that were recruited by Dunn while he walked around obsessively at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's music hall for several months. The music was of a very dreary, desolate, and existential nature and had failed in Dunn's mind to come out the right way. A certain depression ensued and Dunn felt extremely disenchanted with his life in North Carolina.
Compositional Process & Technique
Dunn moved back to Toronto, Ontario in 2004 where he fell ill and developed type one diabetes in the fall of that year while back in North Carolina at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital. He recorded very slowly for the following two years. Mostly guitar works that were strung through different homemade pitch, patch, and process arrangements using unorthodox playing and recording methods. He frequented Guilford College and its surrounding acreage of woods and meadows. His chance meetings with string players or classically trained musicians happened often during his walks through campus and while drinking preposterous amounts of coffee. He composed and arranged works for violin, viola, cello, piano, organ, oscillator, room hum, trombone, trumpet, oboe, flugelhorn, and radio.
Dunn's compositions relied heavily on space, performer, and his own intuition. It was around this time Dunn discovered graphic notation, aleatoric music, and process music. His work with string players and classically trained musicians involved dictation of note and chord progressions that would be captured as short excerpts and stitched together with computer software. Dunn also began studying musicology and engaged heavily into the works of Morton Feldman.
His work in live performances quietened down over the year of 2005 and most of 2006. However, he traveled extensively throughout the eastern U.S. coast and settled at various art centers and friends homes in New York and New Jersey.
For scattered reasons, Dunn returned to Alberta in 2006. He refined some guitar works, began his own CD-R label, Housing, and gave lectures and performances at The Alberta College of Art & Design, Cantos Music Foundation, and the Banff Center for the Arts. Swedish label, Kning Disk, released his Six Cognitive Works album in summer of 2007 alongside a reissue of his first album, Music for Medication, on Los Angeles based label, This Generation Tapes.
He moved to the borough of Brooklyn in New York City in late 2007. After years of meticulous layering, processing, arranging, and recording, Dunn felt his first proper release was with Sedimental Records in 2008, simply titled, Fragments & Compositions of Kyle Bobby Dunn. The album received favorable response and acclaim from printed and web based publications.
In early 2009, Brooklyn based record label, Moodgadget, released Dunn's dated guitar compositions from his 2006 period. The 'Fervency' album was released digitally on the iTunes shop, Boomkat, and throughout the internet.
Dunn's music is associated within avant-garde realms, electronic, drone, neoclassical, and minimalist tagging, but he has spoken of his music in less-than simpler terms and even applied pop and rock classifications to describe his music. Since 2005, Dunn has performed extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada and involved himself in more collaborative ventures and elaborated largely on his intuitive compositional methods.
Partial Discography
- You Made Me Realise Cassette (2005, Housing)
- Applications for Guitar CDr (2006, Housing)
- Music for Medication CD (2007, This Generation Tapes)
- Six Cognitive Works CD (2007, Kning Disk)
- Fragments & Compositions of Kyle Bobby Dunn CD (2008, Sedimental Records)
- Fervency MP3/ FLAC (2009, Moodgadget)
External Links
Kyle Bobby Dunn MySpace Page Discogs Page Sedimental Records Website