It all started with “Cinema.” I am minding my own business, wrestling with the steady flow of deadlines in my journalist mode and sneaking in music-making on the side, when the email arrives with an enticing blast of music attached. I get scores of such emails in my line of music scribe work, but this one was extra special — a beautiful, layered, and, yes, cinematic 11-minute electronic piece of unknown vintage by my longtime friend and musical ally Dick Dunlap.
“Stop the presses and other reality matters,” my ears told me. “We’re on the brink of something very good.” Several months later, Household Ink Records has released an 11-track collection of similar uncategorizable archival gems, opening with “Cinema,” and closing with the album’s title track, “Arlene Rising.” The Arlene in the spotlight is Arlene Dunlap, gifted pianist/piano teacher and Dick’s wife of 60 years, who passed away on November 27 of last year. (See her obituary here .)
The enlightened spark of an e-missive was sent by Glen Dunlap, nephew and caretaker of Dick, in failing health as he approaches his 86th birthday on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. Glen had been an obsessive sleuth, trolling through piles of musical fragments and finished pieces lurking on piles of tapes — of different formats through the decades. To date, he has uncovered dozens of pieces, and he wondered if Household Ink might release “Cinema” as a single, with possibly a few more tracks adding up to an EP. But my curiosity and hunger for more led me to urge for a full, hour-ish-long feast of an album.