Record producer
As a fan of the band Naked City, Dunn contacted keyboardist Wayne Horvitz in Seattle who introduced him to Eyvind Kang. [7] 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. [8] His involvement resulted in a long-term friendship with Kang, through whom he met a number of musicians, mostly in the jazz-rock genre. [7] Dunn was later 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, [9] while he received a writing credit for his involvement with Mr. Birdy's Fryday by the Rockin' Teenage Combo. [10] In 2001 he worked together with trumpet player Lesli Dalaba and guitarist Bill Horist, releasing the ambient album Zahir. [11] [12] He engineered Kang's 2002 album Live Low to the Earth, in the Iron Age. [13]
In 2005, he was credited as an engineer on the Impaled album Death After Life released through Century Media. [14] In the same year, Dunn met Dylan Carlson of the band Earth in Seattle and recorded their fourth album, Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method at Aleph Studios. [15]
After hearing his work with Asva, Stephen O'Malley contacted Dunn to produce the collaborative album between Sunn O))) and Boris, Altar. [1] This began a long relationship with the band doing live sound and producing several of their albums including Monoliths & Dimensions and Kannon. [16]
In 2010, Dunn and Omar Souleyman entered the legendary ADA studio in Istanbul to record and produce a remix of Björk's "Crystalline” which was released on her third remix album, Bastards , in 2012. [17] In the same session, Dunn recorded a full-length Omar Souleyman album, which was not released.
Dunn began an ongoing collaboration with Native American glass artist Preston Singletary, whose work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Singletary and Bernie Worrell (of Talking Heads and Funkadelic) began recording as Khu.éex’ under Dunn's musical direction in 2013. [18]
In 2017, Dunn entered the studio with Myrkur, producing her second album Mareridt. [19]
In 2018, Dunn produced Anna Von Hausswolff's fourth studio album, Dead Magic . The album was critically well received with reviews highlighting Dunn's attention to capturing her vocal performance. [20] [21] Later that year, Dunn produced Cloud Nothings' fifth studio album, Last Building Burning.
The Association of Danish Music Critics nominated Randall Dunn for Producer of the Year in 2018 for his work with Sort Sol, Myrkur, and Childrenn. [22]
Following the release of Panos Cosmatos' Mandy, Dunn and Cosmatos conceived a fictional record made by the character Jeremiah Sand. Along with Milky Burgess, Dunn produced and co-wrote Jeremiah Sand's Lift It Down, which was issued by Sacred Bones in 2018. Pitchfork described the record as “[...] a forged artifact, an album recorded largely because those who created it had so much fun inhabiting its outlandish world.” The record featured Angel Deradoorian, Tad Doyle, Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), Monika Knot (Zen Mother), and Marissa Nadler. [23]
On November 9, 2018, Dunn released his first solo studio album titled Beloved. It featured guest vocals from Frank Fisher of Algiers and Zola Jesus. [24]
Dunn produced American doom metal band Pallbearer's fourth album in 2020, Forgotten Days , which was released by Nuclear Blast and described by Consequence of Sound as "Perhaps the best doom metal album of 2020". [25]
In 2020, Dunn opened the studio Circular Ruin, along with Ben Greenberg and Arjan Miranda. Circular Ruin took its name after the eponymous Jorge Luis Borges story in which a surreal plot is revealed to have been dreamed. Dunn likens the act of music making to mystical themes within the Borges text; the group founded the studio as an invocation of a collective, metaphysical, and medicinal approach to music. Signifying this influence, the studio's logo is derived from the Jungian maze. [26] [27]
Dunn and Ben Greenberg co-produced Algiers’ third studio album There Is No Year , issued by Matador Records in 2020. AllMusic described the record as “[...] extend[ing] the reach of their previous outings while offering a more strategically articulated, disciplined musicality without sacrificing their core sound or blunting their emotional impact.” [28]
Dunn produced Zola Jesus’ sixth studio album Arkhon, issued by Sacred Bones in 2022. The record featured drums by Matt Chamberlain, and was hailed by Pitchfork as “[...]a pleasantly shapeless record [... that] widens the scope of her music while retaining its primal, gothic spirit.” [29]
Dunn produced Silver Haze, the first full-length record from SQÜRL (Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan), featuring performances from Charlotte Gainsbourg, Anika, and Mark Ribot. It will be released on May 5, 2023 by Sacred Bones. [30]
Danny Elfman's 2020 single "Happy," his first solo pop single in nearly forty years, featured mixing by Dunn, as well as additional synth design. [31]
Film and television
In the 2010s, Dunn's work as a record producer evolved into projects in film, including production and engineering, as well as composing and performance.
Dunn recorded several songs with Sun City Girls for the soundtrack to the 2007 Harmony Korine film Mister Lonely . [34]
In 2014, Dunn worked with Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley on scoring the short film Kairos by the Belgian filmmaker Alexis Destoop. [1] [2] It was released as Shade Themes from Kairos on Drag City in 2014. [2]
Dunn co-produced and composed additional music for the score to the Panos Cosmatos film Mandy , along with the late Jóhann Jóhannsson in 2018. [35] The score won multiple awards for "Best Original Score" at the 2019 Austin Film Critics Association Awards, the 2019 Fangoria Chain Saw Awards, and the 2018 Seattle Film Critics Society Awards; it also received multiple nominations for "Best Original Score" at the 2018 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards and the 2018 Hollywood Music in Media Awards. [36]
In 2021, Dunn produced Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s score to the Nia DaCosta film Candyman, with a screenplay by Jordan Peele. [34] The score made the shortlist for the 2022 Academy Awards in the category of Best Original Score. [37]
In 2022, along with Úlfur Hansson, Dunn was the principal composer of the score for the television show Salvage Marines . [38] In the same year, Dunn and Hansson composed the score for The Way of the Psychonaut, a documentary about the life and work of Stanislav Grof, founder of transpersonal psychology. [39]
Dunn was the musical director and producer of Daniel Lopatin’s score to The Viewing, the 2022 Panos Cosmatos episode of Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. Under Lopatin's executive production at Circular Ruin Studio, Dunn contributed additional synthesizer arrangements. [40]
In 2022, Dunn produced Robert Ouyang Rusli's score for Julio Torres’ debut film Problemista , produced by Emma Stone, starring Tilda Swinton, and released by A24 in 2023. [41]
With Daniel Lopatin as the executive producer, Dunn produced the score for the Showtime series The Curse, co-created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie. The score was composed by jazz keyboardist John Medeski. [42]
Dunn produced the Khu.éex’ score for the documentary on the life and work of Preston Singletary.
