Richard Dunlap, Intersphere
(solo piano improvisation recorded at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1981, b/w ambient-leaning soundscape “Fandance,” released on Household Ink Records, February 2024. Now available on CD… go to Amazon, Discogs or the source: www.householdink.com/products )
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To procure a CD, go to Amazon, Discogs or the source: www.householdink.com/products
- “Intersphere;” Dunlap, solo piano, recoded at Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1981
- “Fandance;” recorded at Santa Barbara Sound, engineer: Daniel Protheroe, 1984. Richard Dunlap, electric fan, sound tubes and piano harp
After its initial release of the acclaimed archival Intersphere album into the digital-spheres earlier in 2024, Richard “Dick” Dunlap has gone old-ish school, releasing the album on CD, on Household Ink Records. Veteran image man Ted Killian, the eye behind many Household Ink projects over the decades, did the CD design honors. The album rescues and resurrects profound sounds from 1981—the brilliant and pictorial improvised solo piano piece “Intersphere” b/w the hypnotic ambient piece “Fandance.” Intermedia artist Richard Dunlap, born in Seattle in 1939, has appeared globally. He has shared stages and developed alliances with Ralph Towner, David Friesen and Mal Waldron, and was featured in a LIFE magazine story on sound artists. He was also part of the “hopelessly eclectic” Santa Barbara band Headless Household for 36 years, in many live gigs, and nine albums Household Ink label.
for more info, go here.
Richard “Dick” Dunlap (photo: Glen Casebeer Dunlap, 2024)
Ode to the Sistrum (1999)
1. walk on chairs 2. passage 3. interplay 4. honi the circle maker 5. the horizon is flat mp3 6. harlequin 7. vox flux mp3 8. october 21st 9. mirror, mirror 10. ode to the sistrummp311. happy birthday mp3
“… it’s one of those rare discs that challenges while it satisfies (and vice versa).” –George Zahora, Splendid e-zine (see full review on presspage)
all compositions and realizations by Richard Dunlap, copyright 1999
Richard Dunlap, a man of many hats and skills, has worked in an inter-media world of his own devising for over thirty years, exploring personalized dimensions in visual art, installation work, and sound art and music.
Ode to the Sistrum is a collection of musical assemblages rendered in the digital domain, with sampling and sequencing in addition to the odd real-time, but fortified with warmth, humor and a natural expressiveness. Sometimes, the pieces are of a meditative, ambient nature–in addition to energetic outings like the contrapuntal two-piano maze of “Interplay”– but always with ulterior motives tucked into the crevices, some layered meaning beneath the surfaces. In other words, Dunlap brings an artist’s subtlety and exploratory nature to the business of music-making.
The CD was produced in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition of his visual-spatial-sound work, “For Eyes and Ears,” at the Contemporary Arts Forum in Santa Barbara, California, in the summer of 1999. The exhibit was curated by Peter Frank, who writes in his essay in the CD liner notes, “Dunlap is no less one than the other creative individual, no less musician than artist–following the same method, and the same madness, in both.”
Dunlap has shown his work and performed internationally, and his “rubber band table” was featured in a LIFE magazine story in the late ’70s. He has also been a critical part of the new music group Headless Household since its inception in 1983, with a discography of nine albums on the Household Ink Records label.
Intermedia artist Richard Dunlap was born in Seattle in 1939 and received an MFA in painting at the University of Washington in 1968. He taught in the Art Studio Department at UCSB from 1969 to 1977. Dunlap began performing visual/sound works early in the 1970s and has appeared in New York, Boston, Berlin, Stockholm, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He has participated in New Music America festivals in San Francisco and Hartford. In Santa Barbara Richard participated in the PULSE II exhibition at UCSB and in the FLUXUS exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Dunlap has been a jazz performer since the 50’s and has also written music for film, video and dance. He has received grants and awards including a Creative Arts Fellowship from the University of California, from the Bloom, W.M.Keck and Esperia Foundations, a Tiffany Award in Painting and for music composition from the Santa Barbara Arts Fund.
last modified: january 20, 2024