David Dunn’s New Soundscape Album

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

At the end of this past March, Neuma Records released a single-composition album of the music of David Dunn. The title of the composition is “Verdant,” and it has a duration that is slightly less than 80 minutes. Dunn’s scientific background is complemented by the fact that, in his late teens (1970) he began to serve as Harry Partch’s assistant and remained in that job through 1974.

HIs recent work has focused on soundscapes, recordings of sounds associated with a particular location, which may then be transformed through signal processing techniques and editing. The location for “Verdant” was Dunn’s backyard in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The notes for this album observe:

The aural complexity of this urban soundscape is ordinarily masked by layers of ambient city noise but the combination of the Easter Sunday holiday and Covid-19 pandemic shutdown allowed otherwise suppressed sounds to become readily audible.

The editing of this content involved overlays of harmonically rich patterns played by two electric violins, along with electronic drones and melodies. As a result, the attentive listener will probably be guided by the process of sorting the “natural” sounds from those associated with instruments and electronics.

In other words the overall journey through this composition amounts to “real-time parsing” of Dunn’s auditory artifact. I have been involved with this process of listening for well over half a century, which is long enough for me to assert that acquiring the techniques for attentive listening involve the prerequisite of a generous capacity for patience. I recognize that not everyone is willing to buy into that prerequisite, which means that presenting this genre to a “concert audience” is usually a risky proposition. However, when one has a recording and suitable playback gear at home, listening can be satisfying as a solitary experience or one shared with only a few trusted friends.

The good news is that the content itself is usually rich enough that one can undertake multiple listening experiences without becoming bored with repetition. Nevertheless, listening involves a major commitment of time; and I fear that the number of individuals willing to make such a commitment is on a decline. On the other hand, such focused listening could definitely have served as a vehicle for enduring lockdown when the COVID threat was at its greatest. As a result, I am curious about when Dunn prepared this composition, because I think I would probably have been more receptive to it about six months ago.