Robin Crutchfield: keyboards, vocals, percussion, harp, psaltery, lyre.
Various collaborators include: Nina Canal, Nancy Arlen, Phil Kline, David Rosenbloom, Barry Friar, Steven Brown, Peter Principle, Jim Jarmusch, Ruth Mullen, Bill Sack, Brian Bendlin, Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Shawn McQuate, Clio Caminat, Linda Smith.
Influences
Yoko Ono, Nico, Moondog, Philip Glass, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Young Marble Giants, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Incredible String Band, Tyrannosaurus Rex, The Raincoats, Simon Fisher Turner/Deux Filles, Stereolab, Colleen, Feathers.
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Robin Crutchfield left a quiet, secluded childhood in Ohio and Pennsylvania, studying painting and sculpture, and moved to New York City in the early 1970’s to pursue an interest in performance art, symbolism, and tableau vivant.
After critically acclaimed works at several galleries including Stefan Ein’s 3 Mercer St. Store and Artist’s Space, he took up a keyboard and founded the minimal, no wave experimental noise band, DNA, with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori, which performed at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB’s during the birth of the indie music movement. With recordings to follow, including an Eno-produced album “No New York”, he left DNA less than a year later, to form a solo project of sorts, Dark Day, which made the most of collaboration with various artists and musicians, resulting in further recordings, and concerts where he could express his performance art ideas using dark, moody, psycho-social, symbolic elements.
In the ‘80s, he added writing to his accomplishments, self-publishing several short novels, inspired by the styles of Ted Geisel and Gertrude Stein, and did live performance readings at Club 57 St. Marks, and Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, as well as experimenting with filmmaking.
In the ‘90s, , loaning his music to a Belgian label, and filmmaker Errol Morris, for a short-lived television series, he returned to music playing with computer-based, multi-layered coglike solo composition, and independently releasing several collections.
While continuing his musical pursuits, at the turn of the century, he began delving deeper into the past, writing and publishing a series of faerie tales in miniature book format.
He has more or less retreated from technology of late, pursuing studies related to otherworldly realms, occult symbology, and the playing of primitive, spiritually evocative instruments, a variety of small harps, lyres, psalteries, thumb piano and assorted percussion.
r.l.crutchfield's dark day's Friend Space (Top 18)
