Nicholas Gunn's #0 Year Journey: Echoes August CD of the Month
by John Diliberto 8/3/2025
Some musicians follow a steady path, creating a distinctive sound and honing it across their career. The Bruce Springsteen of Born to Run in 1975 isn’t so different from the Bruce Springsteen of Letter to You in 2020. Other musicians, like David Bowie, shed musical styles like they change clothes. Nicholas Gunn isn’t a changeling. He did build a career out of playing flute over percussive rhythms and pastoral arrangements. He reached a peak, commercially and artistically, with his third release, The Music of the Grand Canyon in 2005. It was such a peak that he revisited the theme in 1999 with Return to Grand Canyon and again in 2006 with Beyond Grand Canyon. His career consisted of variations on that theme until his EDM epiphany in the early 2000s when change did come. With the release of Under the Influence of Music in 2015, he turned completely electronic to create chilled out instrumental, trance and vocal diva tracks. The flute chilled out in its case somewhere while Gunn created streaming hits on his own as wellas with York, vocalist Sam Martin, Dave Neven, Derek Luttrell, RAEYA, Protoculture, Jarod Glawe and Richard Durand..
Now, looking back 30 years to his greatest commercial success, The Music of the Grand Canyon, Gunn has created something of a retrospective of his past 30 years. It’s not a compilation, but all-new recordings that traverse his many styles. But on 30, they all are part of a piece, a journey that Gunn has woven for nearly 35 years.
“Desert Sky” is a track that harkens back to memories of Sedona and his debut, Afternoon in Sedona. Only now, instead of the set of small congas that provided the groove back then, he’s got an electronic rhythm loop going. That’s the instrumental version. The completely different vocal version turns to a more acoustic percussion sound and adds singer Brittany Egbert in an assertive, yet wistful vocal read of Gunn’s lyrics of memories from the desert southwest, singing “Pulling back the veil of time with you in Desert Sky.”.
The electronic influence is now intrinsic to the way Gunn Makes music. Even when working mostly acoustic, Gunn doesn’t get away from the trance and chill aesthetic of repeat modal motifs and ostinato. “Campfire” is built around an acoustic guitar arpeggio with the sound effect of crackling fire while he plays a flute solo into the dark night calling down the spirits. This could’ve been from Gunn’s Grand Canyon era as could “The River”, “Stars” and the title track. These are pastoral, laid back songs that soundtrack Gunn’s memories of days and places past. They also feature his classically trained flute playing, although more as a color element than a solo lead voice.
A track that could not be from that era is “You Move Me.” It’s a downtempo, full electronic track except for Gunn playing flute like he’s commanding a charge into the breach. Similarly, tracks like “Blossom” combine his flute work with atmospheric electronic arrangements. It’s the sound of a chill-out room in Ibiza, replete with nature sounds.
Gunn’s lyric songs on the album give voice to his personal reflections on his life, past relationships, times of peacefulness and times of pain and loss. He doesn’t sing these himself, but gathers a small coterie of singers to give them voice.
Like “Desert Sky”, he records double versions of several of these songs; an electronic version and one he calls acoustic but really, they are still electronically generated. “For You” features singer Alina Renae. The “acoustic” version centers on plucked acoustic guitar with Gunn playing what sounds like an Irish whistle calling in the background like a lost moment against electronic pads and atmospheres. Renae’s vocal is tinged with sadness and loss. On the EDM version, it starts in a similar mode sans acoustic elements, as Renae sings against soaring synth strings. Her vocal, although exactly the same vocal track as the acoustic version, sounds even more impassioned. Although it’s a song that came out of tragedy, it ends in a triumphant trance groove. Life goes on and Renae sings “And now I live for you.”
Gunn works a similar fête with “About Love”, a song which in EDM terms is called a banger. It’s about a love that failed to synchronize in the 1990s along with references to his rebound wife as Jordan Grace sings “The next eight years were lived in vain.” Grace delivers the pathos in a beautifully distressed voice framed by Robert Durand’s, driving grooves. The acoustic version is radically different. Same vocal, but now sounding even more forlorn over a spare piano arpeggio with swooning synth strings and Gunn’s spare flute accents.
A song Gunn wrote for a fellow musician who had left the planet, “Miss You,” may have the most radical transformation. “Miss You (Acoustic)” is an almost saccharine song while the electronic version is a full on trance banger with a groove from Chris Connelly. Alina Renae’s vocal, which sounds wistful on the acoustic version, sounds like it’s storming with anguish here, even though it’s the exact same vocal take.
It’s possible that Nicholas’ Gunn’s 30 is a definitive album for the artist, one that encapsulates his career without really replicating it. It’s something of a Whitman’s sampler, never giving you a plethora of your favorite chocolate blend, but dancing among several different and tasty options. Instead of 30 , it could’ve been called “The World of Nicholas Gunn.” And it’s a nice place to be.