Fly tracked down Dennis to find out where he came from, where he’s heading and everything in between.

“The main change of direction with the Nohno project is that it has many directions,” Dennis said on how he arrived at his new, more flexible medium. “Sector was restricted in a way to a dance-oriented format and ended up being a solo project: Nohno is more open. Musically I’m setting myself new challenges, looking at different styles and also opening up to working with different artists and art forms including film makers and video artists.”

“It’s a matter of playing around with different sources of inspiration and trying to fuse these together to create a piece of music”

“It’s a matter of playing around with different sources of inspiration and trying to fuse these together to create a piece of music,” he said of his musical evolution. “For example, some of the work I’ve been doing has involved using birdsong to generate sequences. This has had some pretty amazing and surprising results, with one particular bird song sounding as if Charlie Parker had been at my side.” Sound interesting? It is.

“The initial process of creating a piece is usually pretty fast; often a matter of days,” Dennis said. “But then I have to leave the work for a while to try to get some objective perspective”.

“I tend to fall in love with something as I’m making it,” he continued. “But then in the morning the rose-tinted glasses have come off. If I still think the basic framework is successful, I’ll try to develop the track further, perhaps adding more sequences, chords, a break or two, new melodies, sounds. Some tracks will take a year to finish, others a matter of days.”

I was hesitant as to whether to bring up the Clock DVA days but Dennis was candid about his past, recognizing it as a necessary step in his own evolution.

“I tend to fall in love with something as I’m making it but in the morning the rose-tinted glasses come off”

“I’ve quite recently come to realize how important Clock DVA were and still are to many people in the electronic scene,” he said. “There was a time after I left DVA when I just wanted to forget all about it. [But] I cut my teeth while I was with DVA.”

“Because some people’s main awareness of my work is through Clock DVA they may have some expectations of what new material will sound like and perhaps they’ll be disappointed it’s not ‘Buried Dreams’ or ‘Man Amplified’. I guess it’s the same for anyone; you just can’t deny or escape from the past.”

Not one to rest, Dennis is already composing a follow-up to Metropolis and plans a concept multimedia album for 2007 through his Out to Lunch label as well as various projects with video and visual artists. As Nohno, Dennis debuts a performance and projection installation in Berwick in 2007.

Needless to say, Dean Dennis is someone you need to know about and the Metropolis mini-album under his Nohno moniker is well worth seeking out.

Links:
Nohno’s MySpace
Out to Lunch Records
Out to Lunch on MySpace