Randall Dunn to Release Beloved Nov. 9; “Something About that Night” Video Posted
Holy mackerel. If you’ve got six minutes or thereabouts, go ahead and plug yourself into Randall Dunn‘s video for ‘Something About that Night’ at the bottom of this post. If you need to go fullscreen because it’s a super thin aspect ratio — cinematic is the whole idea, top to bottom — it’s worth it. The music is affecting, the drama palpable in the soundscape, and the vocals of Frank Fisher give the track a soulful sensibility that works amazingly well with the synthesized worldmaking behind. It’s gorgeous and troubling in the best way.
Dunn, noted for his collaborations with SunnO))) and others, for his participation as a founding member of Master Musicians of Bukkake, and for his production work for Earth, the aforementioned SunnO))), Akron/Family and many more, will release his first solo album, Beloved, on Nov. 9 through Figureight Records. Considering a revolving cast of personnel, I wouldn’t expect “Something About that Night” to speak for the whole album in mood or arrangement, but it certainly stands on its own and the video, directed by Mu Tunç, more than earns its worry beads.
From the PR wire:
RANDALL DUNN ANNOUNCES HIS FIRST SOLO ALBUM, BELOVED (FIGUREIGHT, 9TH NOVEMBER)
FEAT CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PAST COLLABORATORS TIMM MASON, FRANK FISHER (ALGIERS) AND ZOLA JESUS
Randall Dunn, the musician, producer and engineer renowned for his work with Sunn0))), Earth, Tim Hecker, Six Organs of Admittance, Anna Von Hausswolff and so much more, finds his own voice on his first solo album, Beloved, which is set for release on vinyl and digital formats via figureight on November 9th (pre-orders now live).
Following a turbulent period of change and loss, the esteemed producer channeled his energies into a seven song meditation on “anxiety, paranoia, different shades of love, different realisations of mortality, how it can make you feel the stages of your life more deeply.”
Such sentiments are reflected across this beautiful video for the album track “Something About That Night” directed by Mu Tunc, a filmmaker from Istanbul, which we’re delighted to share alongside the album announcement. About the video Randall remarks “I found a common ground in our two cultures current socio-political climates and in the themes of the song – loneliness, loss, and the feeling of human connection’s absence. Mu expressed these sentiments through a compassionate character study of two people who are making their way through a lonely night with all of the pressures of our current age.”
On Beloved Dunn shifts his knack for emphasising the human component of music toward mining emotional resonance, and wrangling a new earthly language from the subtle details and textures generated from early digital and analog synthesisers. “I wanted to make something more like prose or a Gerhard Richter painting with sound,” Dunn says of the album. “Being someone that composes with sound, I wanted to find a voice in it that felt personal, that felt human, especially with electronics, something that didn’t feel too mechanical.” Though electronics can often feel rigid and cold, Dunn sought to find the poetry in their oscillations and a heartbeat in a rhythm outside the grid. “It’s the first time a language hit me and it felt like it was mine,” Dunn says in summation.
Across Dunn’s career as an engineer and producer he has also proven to be a valuable studio asset as a collaborator. He’s lent his arrangement ideas to SunnO))) on Monoliths and Dimensions and Earth on The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull and gone beyond producing to provide instrumentation for Six Organs of Admittance, Anna von Hausswolf, Tim Hecker, and longtime colleague Stephen O’Malley. All of which led to a pivotal invitation to engineer and produce Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s original score for the stylised horror film Mandy. During the project, Jóhannsson encouraged Dunn to explore his synth-driven sound designs. Jóhannsson’s unexpected passing in early 2018 also added to what Dunn refers to as “powerful moment of change.” The gentle encouragement of Eyvind Kang and Jóhann Jóhannsson, and the affirming creative contributions across the album by past collaborators like Timm Mason, Frank Fisher (Algiers), and Zola Jesus were all crucial to the birth of Beloved.
Tracklisting:
1. Amphidromic Point
2. Lava Rock and Amber
3. Something About that Night
4. Theoria : Aleph
5. Mexico City
6. Virgo
7. A True Home
Pre-Order Link: https://lnk.to/RandallDunnBeloved
https://www.facebook.com/RandallDunnMusic/
https://randalldunn.bandcamp.com/
https://www.figureightrecords.com/
