David Dunn – Four Electroacoustic Compositions
Composer David Dunn (born 1953) began his musical life as Harry Partch’s assistant from 1970 to 1974. Over the decades since, he has created a huge catalog of sound works that run the gamut from traditional and experimental music, installations, soundtracks, radio broadcasts and bioacoustic research. David’s compositions and wildlife sound recordings have been featured in scores of forums, concerts, broadcasts and exhibitions. He has taught music courses at UCSD and the College of Santa Fe, and he is President of the Art and Science Laboratory. To sum it up, I guess you could say David Dunn has accomplished a lot, but he ain’t done yet!
Hailing from 2002, the Four Electroacoustic Compositions CD features pieces that span from 1986-’99. “With Zitterings of Flight Released” was composed with a giant, one-of-a-kind analog synth called the VidiumMK II. Boasting high-pitched whines, corroded static drones, soaring keening seagulls and a squadron of flying saucers taking off, the piece concerns itself with “the drama of the spirit’s separation from the body as described by a variety of shamanic and religious traditions.” Let it into your life and it’ll give your noggin a super gnarly charley horse. “Simulation 1: Sonic Mirror” was built of field recordings from the Cuyamaca Mountains in California and transformed via a sampler into myriad analog and digital sounds. Allow this piece unfurl, and you’ll swear that you can hear R2D2 doing battle with an artificial hummingbird in a hall of mirrors. Basically, it’s a chattering, chirping mess that could easily give an epileptic a seizure.
“Wildflowers” is crammed full of cliché sci-fi and video game sounds that gliss up and down like a flock of squeeing, keening electronic pterodactyls that are hell bent on stealing the biggest egg out of your nest—complete with seriously corrosive ascensions, dive bombs and explosions. “Ennoia 2” is a “computer-generated composition that explores the time domain synthesis algorithms created by Arun Chandra’s Wigout program.” Much calmer than the other three tracks, it’s a descending, woozy synth nightmare that makes you feel like you got knocked off your ass by a whole handful of Vicadin, then passed out all night, laying like a mummy on the floor of a dark, dank basement.
Label: Pogus Catalog Number: P21026-2 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 4 Total Time: 53:55 Country: United States Released: 2002 More: Acoustic Ecology, Discogs, EarthEar, Official, Pogus, Vimeo
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