There's something about Kyle Bobby Dunn's music that hits you in a place you didn't know existed. The Montreal-based composer has been quietly crafting some of the most emotionally devastating ambient music of the past decade, and frankly, it's about time more people paid attention. If you haven't encountered his work yet, start with his two monumental collections for Low Point: A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn and Bring Me the Head of Kyle Bobby Dunn. These aren't just albums—they're immersive experiences that prove drone music can be both intellectually rigorous and gut-wrenchingly beautiful. Dunn doesn't just make ambient music; he creates spaces for contemplation, for feeling things you might have buried deep.
But it's his latest work, Kyle Bobby Dunn and the Infinite Sadness, that feels like his most personal statement yet. Over two hours of slowly unfolding beauty that somehow never feels indulgent or overstayed. Dunn's guitar work here is crystalline—those signature swells and hypnotic loops have a clarity and purpose that cuts right through you. You can hear the evolution in his craft, the way he's learned to say more with less. The backstory makes it even more compelling. Dunn recorded source material across various Canadian towns—Belleville, Dorset—before retreating to his L'auberge de Dunn Studios in Montreal. And here's where it gets beautifully human: he admits to creating this music while "reflecting heavily on the gorgeous feet of a certain French woman and binging on strong beer and cheese." That's not just an artist being cheeky—that's someone letting you into the real, messy, beautiful process of making art about longing and loss.
The track titles alone tell a story. Opening with "Ouverture de Peter Hodge Transport," Dunn establishes this haunting, lovelorn trajectory that winds through the achingly beautiful "Boring Foothills of Foot Fetishville" before landing on the devastating closer "And the Day Is Dunn and I Can Only Think of You." His trademark dark humor is there, but it's serving something deeper—these aren't just clever titles, they're emotional roadmaps.
Kyle Bobby Dunn and the Infinite Sadness feels like Dunn finally letting us all the way in. It's his most accessible work without sacrificing any of the complexity that makes his music so rewarding. This is ambient music for people who think ambient music is boring, drone for people who find drone pretentious. It's just beautiful, sad, human music that happens to unfold very, very slowly. As one fan on Rate Your Music put it: "My favourite ambient album of all time. I've been listening to it for years, and my god, each time is as beautiful as the first."
