Randall Dunn

Early life

Originally from Michigan, Dunn moved to Seattle in 1993 to explore his interest in film music. He attended the Art Institute of Seattle to study sound design for film, and formed connections with local musicians, including Skerik and Matt Chamberlain. In an interview, Dunn stated, "I'm sort of a frustrated filmmaker that turned into a record producer. The people I met when I moved here spun me in a way that sent me down this path of treating sound the way I would have treated film."

During his studies he received practical experience at Hanzsek Studios under tutelage of Jack Endino. He gradually became involved in the recording and producing of their sessions.

Record Producer

As a fan of the band Naked City, Dunn contacted keyboardist Wayne Horvitz in Seattle who introduced him to Eyvind Kang. 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. His involvement resulted in a long-term friendship with Kang, through whom he met a number of musicians, mostly in the jazz-rock genre.

At Hanzsek, Dunn was introduced to the engineer Mell Dettmer and together they founded Aleph Studios.

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

In 2005 he was credited as an engineer on the Impaled album Death After Life released through Century Media. 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.

In 2006, Dunn recorded and mixed the collaborative album between Sunn O))) and Boris, Altar.

In 2009, Dunn produced the Sunn O))) album, Monoliths & Dimensions.

Since 2011, Dunn has worked out of Avast studios.

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

In 2015, Dunn produced the Sunn O))) album, Kannon.In 2017, Dunn entered the studio with Myrkur, producing her second album Mareridt.

Master Musicians of Bukkake

In addition to his work as a producer and engineer, Dunn is a keyboardist and founding member of the experimental group, Master Musicians of Bukkake. Dunn described the project as "a way to escape how I make music in the studio when I’m doing records for people".

In 2004, alongside his bandmates, Dunn wrote, arranged and produced the first Master Musicians of Bukkake record, The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order. The album was released on Sun City Girls' label, Abduction Records and featured the musicians Eryn Young (vocals), James Davis, Don McGreevy, Alan Bishop, Charlie Gocher, and John Schuller. The album received a 7.2 score from Pitchfork, describing the project as "a motley assemble of 20 blokes from subterranean Seattle who generally perform lysergically poisoned impressions of Southeast Asian ceremonial music."

Each of the band's records tell "the story of a civilization losing its spiritual consciousness" and "the approach of the West and becoming a commodified spiritual entity." The final chapter, Failed Future, "is the realization that everything that was once with substance is now synthetic." Dunn stated that the final record will be a new cycle. "I’m thinking about how we’re manipulated consciously on a daily level through the internet, Facebook and language manipulation. More and more we’re losing our grip on the layers of reality that we’re presented."

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". 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". 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".

On several occasions, Dunn has expressed a preference for the use of analog recording equipment: "I'm not a huge fan of the predictability of digitally processed music. But when you combine it with analog, you can get a cool medium. I rarely mix in the box, or use Pro Tools to do mixes. Everything is hands-on with faders. I'll start with tape—if it's a rock band, recording to 16-track two-inch tape. It's a beautiful sound you don't hear much of any more. I like the hybrid approach with the soul of tape and the precision of digital."

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”.

Dunn credits his open approach in the studio as being influenced by his studies of Buddhism and psychology. Ryan Mahan of the band Algiers noted that, "If you asked me what Randall's other career would be, it would be as a psychologist. The man just understands people."

Discography

Production

Collaborative Albums

As Master Musicians of Bukkake