18 Jan Dunai – Illdot0
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Durk pointed me to have a listen to this man from Russia, because he was doing some amazing stuff! The first time I visited Dunai’s Soundcloud page, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the amazing quantity as well as quality of the music listed there. This man was just all over the place. And as it turns out, none of his work was published.
I hooked up with Alexei, better known as Dunai BuddhaMindCorporation, to ask him if he was interested in releasing some of his splendid material on our little label. And to my pleasant surprise he was immediately into the idea. We agreed that it would be a good idea to start of his release schedule with a seven track EP containing five original tracks as well as two remixes, one by Leisure-B and one by Julian Winter.
Alexei Kalinkin / Dunai BuddhaMindCorporationDunai’s music is a strange but instantly catchy blend of jazzy hip-hop beats and an absolutely fantastic modern production style. Even though what happens in Dunai’s tracks could appear to the layman as lacking structure, to the trained ear of the twenty first century only beauty will emerge.
Being a musician started of for Alexei when he got into contact with the recordings of Jimmy Hendrix as a youngster. He was so fascinated by the sounds which Jimmy managed to produce on his Strat that he instantly tried to copy them using his mouth and vocal chords. After mastering his beat boxing skills, he started using Magixx Music Studio in order to record himself.
Once he got the taste of what a DAW can do for you, it was time to leave Magixx be and find a serious way of composing digitally. This is where the trackers came in. Unbeknown to a lot of modern producers, trackers used to be the way to go for musicians on a budget. Using tracker technology, which enables full control over sample placement and manipulation, Alexei managed to bring his production skills to up to a whole new level. This is where things started to get serious.
At this time, Alexei got hooked up with a renowned Moscow music collective which broadened his musical perspective considerably. He started seriously digging into the single track-, or linear composition style using Sonic Foundry’s Sound Forge. This extremely tedious technique consists of just endlessly copying and pasting samples into a single sample file until you have an entire track. It is known for completely turning around the way one thinks about the musical time line. I’m baffled every time I hear mention of someone actually applying this way of composing.
The linear composition technique can only get you so far though, so Alexei recently decided to switch to the more conventional way of composition using the latest version of Fruity Loops, as well as Reaper for it’s amazing native plug ins and sound manipulation options.
All in all Dunai’s style is extremely versatile, has strong roots in all the great music that has been produced in the global hip-hop and electronic scene while at the same time being one step ahead of most producers of his generation. This first EP can be considered a small peek into his enormous vault of amazing songs. Enjoy!