Kyle Bobby Dunn - A Young Person's Guide To... (Low Point, 2010)

Kyle Bobby Dunn - Small Show Of Hands


I know there were probably, like, hundreds of you who creamed your pants over that supreme original art print/album The Intimate Rituals Of Kyle Bobby Dunn on Songs From Under The Floorboards. And you had every right to because it was fucking gorgeous. Well, Mr. Dunn has another release with more than twice as much music on it.

A Young Person's Guide To Kyle Bobby Dunn is a double disc of old(ish) material. The first disc is basically last year's digital release Fervency and the second contains songs culled from the same time period when the Fervency recordings were made. So all of these tracks were physical release virgins until now.

Have you ever been walking down the street and it was raining so hard that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face? And the clouds were so thick that not even a single beam of light could penetrate. And your entire body was comprised of water, soaked, quite literally, to the bone and you were bordering on hypothermia. Me neither. But you can imagine it, right? Imagine how fucking pissed off at the entire world you would be.

Then imagine you take another step and it's all gone. The clouds are gone. The rain is gone. The sky is blue and the sun's rays are warming your instantly dry body. Your shoes aren't squishing out water and you lay down on the dry grass basking like a lizard. You would be the happiest motherfucker alive.

That feeling of absolute luxury bathing in the sun when seconds prior you were about to kill baby unicorns is how I feel when listening to A Young Person's Guide To... The lush, majestic tones that float out of my speakers turn me to mush.

The way Dunn can digitally manipulate classical instruments is incredible. It puts him in the same class as Stars Of The Lid and William Basinski, though he imitates neither. Dunn may only have a handful of releases so far but this dude is going to go down in history as one of the masters of minimal 21st century drone. Grab as much of it now as you possibly can.