#kyle bobby dunn

[caviarsonoro]

kyle bobby dunn : Second Light ( Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes 2024).

Nunca más caminarás en los caminos naturales.

Nunca más te podrás sentir invulnerable, real y densa. Para siempre está perdido lo que más que todo procuraste: la plenitud de cada presencia.

Y será siempre el mismo sueño, la misma ausencia.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

[musicmakesyousmart]

Kyle Bobby Dunn - Kyle Bobby Dunn & the Infinite Sadness

Students of Decay

2014

[sunkentreasurecove]

[gacougnol]

(via From Here to Eternity | Kyle Bobby Dunn)

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Kyle Bobby Dunn / Wayne Robert Thomas - KBD / WRT

For this week’s Bandcamp Monday, dig in/bliss out to two deep droners from Kyle Bobby Dunn and Wayne Robert Thomas (both RIYL Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker, etc). Both clocking in at over 20 minutes, these meditative, glacially paced compositions are just the thing to kick the work week off in celestial fashion. I may be physically sitting at my desk while listening, but spiritually, I’m somewhere up in the clouds. 

[gacougnol]

Listen/purchase: PRINT/TRACK 04 by Anjou, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Gregory Euclide

[dustedmagazine]

Kyle Bobby Dunn — From Here to Eternity (Past Inside the Present)

From Here to Eternity by Kyle Bobby Dunn

What is it about ambient music that lends itself to the maximal? Not that I’m complaining: I’ll savor every second of, say, Stars of the Lid’s last two albums, which clock in at over two hours apiece. Not to be outdone, the latest album from Montreal’s Kyle Bobby Dunn measures up as a quadruple LP or triple CD set — or a very long list of tracks, if digital is your format of choice. It’s a twofold challenge: how do you keep the music varied enough to justify the length while simultaneously keeping the overall mood relative stable? While there’s certainly a thin line between, say, the noisier side of drone and the more blissed-out side of noise, that’s not what’s at work here. Rather, at their best these grandiose works have an almost architectural component: they’re musical spaces that both linger and encourage lingering.

Dunn’s music has a deeply tactile quality, and a mournfulness that suffuses much of it. At the same time, there’s also a sense of humor present: you don’t release an album this long with the word “eternity” in the title without at least some self-awareness. That’s a good thing. Better still is the immersive quality of this music, which resonates without ever sagging.  

And this one’s been in the works for a while: some of the recordings date back to 2012, and artists like Pan*American, Loscil, and Wayne Robert Thomas (with whom Dunn released a fantastic split LP last year) contributed to various tracks. And Dunn’s got more in the works: due out later this year is a collection of B-sides that’s nearly as long as the album itself.  

Much of the album has a very organic feeling to it: even as the volume increases, “Infinite Escalators” recalls nothing quite so much as a musical translation of the inhalation and exhalation of breath. Listening to it recalls sitting in a room with something alive, observing something in slumber, something at peace. And there are also moments of unadorned beauty to be found here: “Triple Axel on Cremazie,” one of the shorter works here, tears at the heartstrings even as it ventures towards the cosmic.  

While the overall impression of From Here to Eternity is one of somber release, subtle contrasts and juxtapositions reveal deeper themes and unruly parallels. “Alpine ‘88 (Soundtrack Suite)” blends that meditative sensibility with tones that phase in and out of rhythm. It still creates a trance-like effect, but it also inserts some randomness into the proceedings, ultimately taking this composition to a starker and almost devotional place. Elsewhere, the sonic contrasts are even more stark. On “Happiness & Momentum,” Dunn collocates of birdsong with dense, almost metallic tones that sound like they could soundtrack a spaceship landing in some ambitious science fiction film.  

The note on which this album ends, though, is equal parts terror and transcendence — the boldest of all of Dunn’s juxtapositions. “Eternity, the Stars & You” is the album’s most intense moment, the ambient equivalent to the uninterrupted wall of noise with which My Bloody Valentine would close “You Made Me Realize.” The scale of this composition is massive, and it’s nearly impossible to describe it: it’s equal parts blissful and terrifying. It feels like a moment of revelation, with all the good and bad that that imparts.  

From Here to Eternity offers listeners plenty to experience. And “experiential” might well be the best way to describe this album. Like the best ambient and drone works, this massive record is one that can certainly be used for blissed-out late-night listening. But it’s also one made with care and detail, and one that rewards engaged listening. This is an album to live inside of for months.  

Tobias Carroll

[earinfluxion]

Kyle Bobby Dunn: “Dropping Sandwiches (In Chester Lake)” (Ways of Meaning, Desire Path Recordings 2011)

The tragic beauty of this album’s opening track never fails to take my breath away.