Interview: Kyle Bobby Dunn

Note: This interview was originally published in Fracture Compound, Vol. 1

On his forthcoming LP, Ways of Meaning, Can­ada-born, New York-based composer Kyle Bobby Dunn offers a condensed ver­sion of his reflective take on musical minimalism.

But the album’s relative brevity belies its truer nature. Despite its slow pacing, Dunn’s music revels not in stasis, but in subtlety. Us­ing mostly just guitar and organ, Dunn crafts momentary escapes that seem at once mournful and introspective, even as they offer a distant view of something bet­ter and brighter, shimmering like the horizon at a long, flat high­way’s vanishing point.

Dunn might create his music with very specific inspirations — as with the surprisingly literal “Dropping Sandwiches In Ches­ter Lake” — but his abstraction of his own thoughts invites the creation of new ones. Ways of Meaning, indeed, has many.

Fracture Compound: You cite as influences a litany of compos­ers — from Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt, to Brahms and Bach. Is there any period, or group of compos­ers you feel were more of a direct influence than others?

Kyle Bobby Dunn: Well one that I’ve had trouble letting go of since I was really young is the music of Arvo Pärt, but I don’t really know if any one composer is a direct influence. That may or may not come out in my overall sound.

F.C.: What was your introduc­tion to classical music, and to minimalism?

K.B.D.: Probably the CBC radio 2 programs and watching films as a kid. I always felt a great affin­ity towards the quieter classical music I heard, and it was Pärt and Silvestrov who saved me when I was almost too young to understand. But I also collapsed upon hearing the church music and requiems of Italian com­poser Luigi Cherubini — I was in the 6th grade.

F.C.: What attracted you to the style of music?

K.B.D.: The truth. The brutal hon­est beauty of the swells and echoes of it. How it really abol­ished all other forms and things I’d heard and still hear… there’s just something so pure and fright­ening about it.

F.C.: I feel like minimalism, in particular, has reached beyond the chamber music crowd and been more accepted by adven­turous popular music fans, may­be because of acts like Stars of the Lid, or composers like Phillip Glass making inroads. Do you consider your music to be more academic or more pop-oriented (for lack of a better term)?

K.B.D.: I am probably most cer­tainly not an academic. If some­one asked me to conduct a class on music and composition, they might be in trouble. I love a lot of music that is considered aca­demic classical music or holds some place in traditional realms, but I have had a regular taste in pop and rock based musics as well. I don’t know where I stand. Probably in neither class.

F.C.: I feel as a listener, I tend to try to contextualize instrumental pieces with visual imagery, set­ting scenes or creating visions in my head. But I’m never entirely sure that what I’m imagining lines up with what the composer was imagining. How do you try to influence the listener’s recep­tion of a piece? And how much does it matter, if at all, that their vision of it aligns with yours?

K.B.D.: Well I think that if I am being totally honest with the sounds dispensation and titles, I can’t do much more to influ­ence the imagery for the listener, but that’s not a necessity to the music. I know how listening dif­fers from person to person and I don’t really care how one takes it in on their own. I know what they mean and visualize to me, and that’s fine.

F.C.: Do you feel there’s a pres­sure, as a composer, to try to as­sign a narrative to your music?

K.B.D.: I don’t feel a pressure, it just happens as it does. Some­times, even to me, it comes across as a bit muddied or slop­py, but that’s how life is. Plus, these are just musical abstrac­tions of my own memories or ideas. The narrative that is there may be very alienating for a lis­tener to try and follow.

F.C.: Your upcoming album, Ways of Meaning, has some pretty distinct titles — I’m think­ing specifically of “Dropping Sandwiches in Chester Lake” and “Movement for the Com­pletely Fucked.” How do you ar­rive at a title for a given piece?

K.B.D.: “Dropping Sandwiches” came from a memory of a trip I took to Chester Lake Alberta in 1999. We had hiked this large mountain trail for hours to a beautiful remote glacier lake and I regretfully threw my sand­wich into the lake. The general theme was taken from a film I was working on around then. Just slowed down and and guitar’d out.

“Movement” is a bit of a different one for me but also ultra-person­al. It’s really just about the state of myself, the way things are in my life (and probably others) and the kind of complete sadness and in­escapable build of it. It’s really just a slow choke and toss into com­plete existential bliss. I’ve arrived at its title ‘cause I’ve never felt so fucked in life before.

F.C.: Ways of Meaning is, as a whole, a lot more concise than A Young Person’s Guide — was that a specific goal of this col­lection, to keep it shorter?

K.B.D.: It just wound up that way because I was only sitting with these songs for a few months. Young Person’s Guide was in the unfortunate position for a long time because its work that I was doing at a really young age and marinating on for years (some of the songs on it anyway).

When I think about it though, the thoughts and process of both al­bums are pretty similar. But that’s just me.

F.C.: The press release for Ways of Meaning says it’s “a treatise on the resonance of memory; an attempt to harness the finality of meaning as a shared experi­ence.” Can you elaborate some on that?

K.B.D.: I didn’t write that, but I think Michael (Vitrano, at De­sire Path Recordings) meant the music is simply a way of dealing with memory — although you’re dealing with the memory of some loser called “Kyle Bobby Dunn,” so I don’t know why it’s a treatise. It can be, but I’m sure some people hear this and think, “What a sap!”

F.C.: How do you feel your music is particularly capable of explor­ing these abstract concepts?

K.B.D.: I’m not sure that it is. Some might not even find this particu­larly musical or beneficial at all. Maybe because I am not ca­pable of anything else I feel like channeling things through music and sound.

F.C.: How would you anticipate a listener, hearing the music without the benefit of a press re­lease, or even track titles, might interpret the album? How much context should someone have to fully appreciate your work?

K.B.D.: It might work better for them that way — without hearing a personal side view or backstory. It’s always up to the listener if you are releasing your own music, it re­ally is. Interpretation is theirs, and if it’s not, don’t release it.

I know I have some odd titles and weird ways of labeling my mu­sic, and they are just a guide or channel into my mind or nature of working, which is basically what all music is. If I’ve done anything it’s just a more direct, brooding approach to expressing feelings into music, maybe.

The context is all there but at the same time it isn’t. Unless you’ve been there with someone through all their atrocities, loves, and moods you never complete­ly know, and if you have it’s still just a maybe.

My mind is just as confusing to me as others — so this music could just be as big of a joke as anything else that is out there. There’s a lot of strangeness and emptiness in it, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad for people.