Ian McKinney: synthesizer wizard
Ian McKinney was raised in a barn in Des Moines, Iowa, but has been based in Austin, Texas since 2008. A sour, prickly loner since the day he was born, arrogant and unpleasant to be around but desperate for validation: a natural born artist.
Ian found his calling the day he received his first electronic keyboard — a Casio CA-110. On that foggy Christmas eve, ideas raced through his preteen mind. He realized that funny sound effects are also technically “music.” That symphonies exist within even the humblest pieces of consumer trash; that each step of technological progress births new forms of liberation and oppression; new ways to both transcend and pervert the human experience.
It was then that the arc of his life bent toward novelty synthesizer music.
Dance Jail: Enter the Soundtrack
Enter Dance Jail is the first chapter in the saga of Virgil Equinox, disgraced International Super Dance Champion, after he is confined to the sinister DANCE JAIL: a high tech correctional facility for criminals deemed too good at dancing to house anywhere else. Where dancing is a weapon... and your only defense.
Jean-Patrick Nova’s Dance Jail is a long-gestating passion project for the director, first appearing as a comedy trailer in 2008, later expanded into a 22 minute tv pilot in 2015, and finally seeing limited release in 2022. Imagine The Running Man crossed with West Side Story, but cast exclusively with non-dancers.
Most of the music collected in Dance Jail: Enter the Soundtrack was originally composed circa 2015, but has been newly remixed, remastered, and expanded. The three key reference points are 1.) the theme song from Mortal Kombat, 2.) the theme song from Airwolf, and 3.) the part at the end of Thriller where Vincent Price does a big laugh.
The score straddles the line between fun and vaguely threatening, drawing influences from disco, italo, electro, industrial, IDM, horror film scores, video game boss music, and any genre of music that can accommodate “orchestra hits.”
All songs written and produced by Ian McKinney 2022 using a combination of hardware and software synthesizers in Renoise and Logic Pro X. The album is currently available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and wherever music is streamed.
Other works
Octodad (Nobody Suspects a Thing)
Ian McKinney is best known for writing and performing the theme song for 2014’s hit video game Octodad: Dadliest Catch. A lo-fi surf romp with an irritatingly catchy chorus.
TV Dads - All Skate!
In 2015 Ian returned to his roots with All Skate! a lo-fi tribute to the golden age of roller skating music, bounced back and forth between computer and cassette multiple times for maximum flutter and grit.
Think of “All Skate!" as the music from one of your mom’s aerobics tapes, left out in the sun for a while. Jane Fonda’s leotard, programmed into a computer. A side-ponytail converted to MIDI.
Dimetrodon - II
Following All Skate!, Ian McKinney kept busy for a few years working on film music and the like, but eventually returned to the stage with the stoner/doom metal band Dimetrodon. The power trio released their debut album II in late 2019, but plans for a tour and a followup album were scuttled due to a certain unfortunate world event that started a couple months after that.
The 12 instrumental tracks of Dimetrodon’s *II* loosely follow the story of a savage barbarian as he faces off against a wizard and his monster friends in the windswept deserts of Mars. Drawing from stoner, prog, proto-metal, krautrock, and other influences, *II* is a window into of the mind of a boomer dad describing the airbrushing on the cargo van he had back when he was your age.
Pictures
Video
