I know that most musicians hire publicity people to write their bios.
Or they pretend like they did. (I’ve done both.) I thought that this
time around, I’d just come out and say that it’s me.
My name’s Gene Kondusky. I was born in Toronto,
Canada. My Dad’s American, my Mom’s Canadian, and my family bounced back
and forth across the border for most of the seventies and eighties.
Eventually, we settled in the Niagara region. That sort of biographical
detail isn’t usually important, but I thought I’d mention it, since I
think it comes to play in my music. Y’see, I’ve kind of kept up that
tradition of moving around. I went to university to study English
literature in the capital, Ottawa – as far away as my teenage ambitions
could take me. Then, after I finished in 2004, I went about as far away
as I could: Japan.
Travelling is a big part of my life – but so is
music. It wasn’t long after I settled in on the shores of the Pacific
that I had the urge to play again. Although I have a strong folk bent to
my songwriting, I wasn’t really happy to be another iteration of the
singer-songwriter-with-an-acoustic-guitar bit. I really wanted a full
sound. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a band, and since I knew I wouldn’t
be staying in Japan forever, didn’t really feel like I was in a position
to start one. I overcame this dilemma by writing songs specifically for
a looping station. If you don’t know what that is, just think of the
music of Imogen Heap or Owen Pallett. Songs build in layers, rather than
as verse-chorus-verse chunks. My particular brand of layering was
chilled-out ambient acoustic music. My then-girlfriend suggested the
name “The Noble Son” – the meaning of my given name – for the
project. Excited, I agreed, and began to play shows.
Things went really well with the live shows,
since people hadn’t really seen that style of music yet. After only a
few months of playing mostly in front of friends, I did a short tour
across Japan, which was really exciting for me.
At about the same time, the music program
Garageband was released by Apple. Feeling ambitious, I decided to record
an EP. The resulting release – appropriately titled “The EP,” – was
pretty much a disaster. I really did not know what I was doing. I still
stand by the songs themselves – but the recordings leave a bit to be
desired. I know that’s not a great sales pitch, but if you’re
interested, you can still find it on iTunes and the Home Is Not Here
website.
Despite the dubious quality of the recordings, I
still managed to get a fair bit of positive reviews. Radio stations in
Australia, Belarus and Italy all played my music. I had articles and
interviews about The Noble Son published in magazines and newspapers in
Canada, the US, the UK, and a bunch of other places. I also received a
lot of press when I moved to Turkey in 2006.
I moved back to Ottawa in 2007 to complete a
Master’s degree in English literature. At that point, it had been over
two years since I started the looping project, and to be honest, I was
feeling more constricted by the looping station than liberated. Even
though the looping station allowed me to push the boundaries of what one
can accomplish with an acoustic guitar (and less than perfect skill!), I
really wanted to expand my sound. Meanwhile, I had also done a lot of
research and a lot of practice with digital audio workstations. After
flirting with Garageband, Cubase, and a few others, I found a new muse
in Ableton Live. The program helped me to reconsider the way I approach
songwriting, and allowed me to employ a wide range of musical
instruments (virtually, of course) that I would otherwise have been
unable to access.
It became apparent sooner rather than later that
this was an entirely new project. Since it was a new project, I thought a
new name was in order. Having just seen the Canadian premiere screening
of Heima, the Sigur Rós documentary (with Ottawa-native
director Dean DeBlois on hand to do a Q and A!), I decided to name the
new project “Kites Overhead,” referencing a particularly beautiful scene
in the film.
After playing a few shows as Kites Overhead, I
sat down to focus on recording a full-length album. The first song I
actually completed was “Thaw.” Although that song went down to tape with
relative ease, the remainder of the album definitely did not. It also
didn’t help that after I finished the Master’s program (and after only a
year in Ottawa), I moved up to the arctic. The arctic was amazing, but
adjusting to life in the North took its toll on me in a number of ways.
After returning home to Toronto the next summer, I
began focussing in earnest on completing the album. Some more work was
done, and, following a move to Montréal in the autumn, I finally
completed the album. The brilliant mastering engineer Harris Newman at
Grey Market in Montréal completed final audio postproduction in March
2010. Mission accomplished!
I decided to divide the recordings into two
releases. The first is an EP, called “In the Shadow of the Mountain,”
which was released on 31 March 2010. It contains two songs to be
released on the album, as well as a cover of a song by The Magnetic
Fields. “In the Shadow of the Mountain” is available as a free download
from the Home Is
Not Here website. So far, the EP has been flying off the virtual
shelves, and the Halifax-based online music magazine Herohill had some very kind words for the release.
The album, released on 7 September 2010, is called You
are a secret, and you must never tell it. The title is a nod to
American postmodern poet John Ashbery, and reflects my continued
interest in literature and – I hope – my ongoing commitment to artistic
exploration. So far, it's been doing well. It's playing on radio waves coast to coast, and I've had some great reviews come in at Herohill, Midnight Poutine, and NxEW.
Thanks for reading!