Kyle Bobby Dunn (born February 27, 1986 in Ontario) 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" and "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
First realized in Calgary, Alberta, Dunn started composing and arranging his music on piano and cassette tapes (audio and video) in the late 1990s. He began seriously performing and recording under the name Kyle Bobby Dunn in 2002 with the first self released album, Music for Medication.
In interviews he has often mentioned 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.
[edit] Recent worksReleasing what he has referred to as his 'first proper full length' album, Fragments & Compositions of Kyle Bobby Dunn, on Boston's Sedimental label in 2008. The album covered several years of his earliest compositional works, mainly for strings and piano.
In early 2010, a long form album that filled a double compact disc set containing five years worth of his music, A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn, arrived on the UK based label Low Point, and was praised in various music journalism and considered a 'deeply affecting' work by The New York Times and 'his most definitive statement so far,' by Pitchforkmedia.
He 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.