Randall Dunn

Randall Dunn is an American record producer, audio engineer, and musician from Seattle. He is a founding member of the group Master Musicians of Bukkake, with whom he has released one album.^[1] As a record producer, he has worked with musical acts such as Sunn O))), Six Organs of Admittance, Marissa Nadler, Wolves in the Throne Room, Boris, Kinski, Akron/Family, Oren Ambarchi, Eyvind Kang, The Cave Singers, Earth, and Jesse Sykes, among others.^[2]

Career

Originally from Michigan, Dunn moved to Seattle in 1993 to explore his interest in film music.^[3] He attended the Art Institute of Seattle to study sound design for film,^[4] and formed connections with local musicians, including Skerik and Matt Chamberlain.^[5] During his studies he received practical experience at Hanzsek studios under tutelage of Jack Endino.^[3] He gradually became involved in the recording and producing of their sessions.^[1] Dunn received his first credit for a session with Eyvind Kang, resulting in the piece "5th NADE/Invisible Man" on the 7 NADEs album released in 1996.^[6] His involvement resulted in a long-term friendship with Kang, through whom he met a number of musicians, mostly in the jazz-rock genre.^[1] At Hanzsek Dunn had been introduced to the engineer Mell Dettmer and together they founded Aleph Studios.^[3]

In 1998 he engineered the live portion of the album Bumpa by Critters Buggin,^[7] while he received a writing credit for his involvement with Mr. Birdy's Fryday by the Rockin' Teenage Combo.^[8] In 2001 he worked together with trumpet player Lesli Dalaba and guitarist Bill Horist, releasing the ambient album Zahir.^[9][10] He engineered Kang's 2002 album Live Low to the Earth, in the Iron Age.^[11]

In 2004, alongside his bandmates, Dunn wrote, arranged and produced the first Master Musicians of Bukkake record, The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order, featuring the musicians Eryn Young (vocals), James Davis, Don McGreevy, Alan Bishop, Charlie Gocher, and John Schuller.^[12] He described the project as "a way to escape how I make music in the studio when I’m doing records for people".^[1]

In 2005 he was credited as an engineer on the Impaled album Death After Life released through Century Media.^[13] In the same year he produced the band Earth, who recorded their fourth album Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method with Dunn at Aleph Studios.^[14]

Since 2011, Dunn has worked out of Avast studios.^[1]

In 2014, Dunn worked with Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley on scoring the short film Kairos by the Belgian filmmaker Alexis Destoop.^[4][15] It was released as Shade Themes from Kairos (Drag City, 2014).^[16]

Style

When being offered to produce someone, Dunn prefers "people to send the roughest demos possible rather than more elaborate ones. And I try to see if it’s music that I – or my aesthetics – can work with. Like, with their vision, and the end goal".^[1] He also pointed out that "people themselves are a really big thing for me. I just try to find people that you can spend ten days with in a small room, still enjoy each other’s music and company, and be collaborative".^[1] As a musician, Dunn described himself "as an arranger in the studio. I learned a lot of that from Eyvind, working with him on his music or in different capacities. You have to think several steps ahead as a musician – tuning, performance, rhythm – you have to think about all these layers of how sounds work".^[1]

David Golightly of Midday Veil, describing working with Dunn, said “the sound emerges from the working relationship he has with the musicians in the group – he’s able to get sounds out of people that really push things to the next level”.^[1]

Discography

• Steve von Till, A Life Unto Itself (2015)^[17]
• Alastor: Book of Angels Volume 21 (Tzadik, 2014)
• Marissa Nadler, July, (2014)
• Wolves in the Throne Room, Celestite (2014)

As Master Musicians of Bukkake

Access of Evil (2004/2010)

References