It’s been a busy few years for American pianist and composer Dustin O’Halloran. As well as popping up in some unexpected places—on Leonard Cohen’s posthumous album Thanks For The Dance (2019) and Scandinavian chart-topper Ane Brun’s “How Beauty Holds the Hand of Sorrow” (2020), for example—he’s also been having a productive time writing soundtracks for Apple+ TV’s The Essex Serpent and A Spy Among Friends (both in 2022), to name just a couple.
In 2024 alone, he has scored two films back to back—Bridget Jones Diary: Mad About the Boy and Eleanor the Great, the directorial debut from Scarlett Johansson—as well as releasing his latest album (1 0 0 1) on Deutsche Grammophon and touring it around Europe, he also released a new single and video for the album. As he prepares for his upcoming UK tour, we managed to grab some time with him in his Reykjavik studio…
“It’s been a busy couple of years for sure,” he laughs. “In fact I’m ready to pull back and slow down a bit now. I find this is the way the rhythms go, and you really need to have the quieter times in between. They’re good for the music as well as the soul.”
The biggest talking point on Dustin’s agenda right now is 1 0 0 1. What began, before the pandemic, as a collaborative piece created with choreographer Fukiko Takase has grown into his most ambitious and sonically adventurous project yet—a four-piece meditative journey into the interactions between technology, nature and human consciousness. Premiered in its initial form at Minneapolis’ Liquid Music Series in 2019, a larger tour was subsequently scuppered by COVID. Dustin returned to the project and expanded it into a more widescreen audio-only experience, bringing in collaborator and composer Bryan Senti to play violin, a hand-picked eight-voice choir, Paul Corley (Sigur Rós) for some electronic production, and the Budapest Art Orchestra.
“The jumping off point for the project was (Masamune Shirow’s) classic manga Ghost in the Shell,” explains Dustin, “which explores ideas of mind-body dualism. It sparked a lot of conversations between myself and Fukiko about consciousness: is it part of the body, or separate? What would it mean if you could somehow remove it? Or place it in a new body? From these talks we initially created a journey in three parts that begins with the beauty and chaos of nature, evolves into this kind of playful stage where we are at now, where we are kind of slow merging with the technology but humanity is still distinctly represented, and then this unknown destination where we don’t understand what we are doing or how it will look. The crazy thing is that when we started, we truly didn’t know how much the technology and the conversation around it would advance…”
To bring the project back to its origins, Dustin has released a stunning new video for the album’s opening section, “Spiritus Naturae Aeternus”. Directed by Markus Englmair, it features Takase performing an adaptation of the original choreography in a selection of natural and abandoned spots in Iceland. “It was a really fun shoot,” enthuses Dustin. “Fukiko had never been to Iceland before. We got this crazy weather with sporadic storms and didn't even know if we would be able to do it at one point. But in the end it added beautifully to the tension. Fukiko was very strong and embraced the extreme conditions. Dance, for me, is like music in that it speaks to us on a subconscious level and hits in a way that is so profound. Combining the two can be magical.”
Where “Spiritus Naturae Aeternus”, which means “the eternal spirit of nature” in Latin, is patient, soaring and reflective, the swirling two-piece “Cymatic Love Spiral” is more complex, using piano, strings and a sawing violin refrain to usher in a sense of ludic urgency and mild uncertainty that develops further with the electronic four-piece set “Harmonic Dream Sequence”. What begins as a widescreen—and wide-eyed—trip through the star-filled cosmos gradually builds into something altogether more intense, distorted and disturbing, emerging into the final five-piece sequence “Transfigural Syntax Eclipse,” which struggles to find any kind of peaceful resolution until the very end.
“The project was a whole different way for me to approach music and explore a different palette,” says Dustin. “It gave me a chance to work more on the electronic side, which I have explored a lot with A Winged Victory For The Sullen, but not in my own work, so suddenly I got to use all the found explorations I had gathered. I realised at one point that I had to go all in, and not dip my toe in halfway. I think it’s also my way of stating my belief that artists who stay in the same place musically do a disservice to themselves and their audience. Whenever I have any self doubt about that, I just look at old videos of David Bowie, the sage godfather of how to explore your own artistic path. It reminds me that it’s important to challenge yourself and your audience, even if you lose some fans along the way. It's important to feel curious and excited and at the edge of your abilities.”
The album is Dustin’s second full-length for the Deutsche Grammophon label, which has been the musician and composer’s home since he released his 2019 piece EP Sundoor, and follows on from his celebrated 2021 release, Silfur. “I have to say that the label, and especially Christian Badzura, who is a real music lover and a driving force for this kind of music, has been really enthusiastic about my work right from the beginning. For this new album, Christian also loved the concept and encouraged me to go where I wanted to go with it. It was great to have the ability to record the orchestra and choir, and of course to know that the label takes such care in the vinyl pressings and overall presentation of the music.”
1 0 0 1 is out now, and you can find the UK tour dates below.
On Tour
21 Feb 2025 UK, Manchester - St.Peters
22 Feb 2025 UK, Birmingham - Bradshaw Hall
23 Feb 2025 UK, Bristol - The Lantern
24 Feb 2025 UK, London - Union Chapel
26 Feb 2025 UK, Gateshead - The Glasshouse
27 Feb 2025 SC, Edinburgh - Queens Hall
Words by Paul Sullivan
