Press
Praise for FAIR PLAY
“ [The score] captured the tensions of New York, the stock trading industry and a couple on the brink.”
(Abby White, Hollywood Reporter, September 21, 2023)
“Ominous music (by Brian McOmber) and shadowy cinematography (by Menno Mans) tell us we are probably wrong to pine after them.”
(Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair, January 21, 2023)
“The sound design, emphasizing the ceaseless hum of city living – the elevated train, a vacuum cleaner, another 4:30am wake-up alarm – coupled with Brian McOmber’s scratchy-insides score, puts the film’s resting heart rate at around two-beats-shy-of-a-panic-attack.”
(Kimberly Jones, Austin Chronicle, September 29, 2023)
“the innovative soundtrack by Brian McOmber — made the debut of “Fair Play” at Sundance and subsequent screening at the Toronto International Film Festival a 2023 sensation.”
(Susie Bright, San Francisco Chronicle, September 29, 2023)
“The unique score by composer Brian McOmber adds to the bubbling tension of the film and enhances the storytelling. The music emphasizes the energy, anxiety, and pace of the characters' lives.”
(Owen Danoff, ScreenRant, September 28, 2023)
Praise for 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL
(L-R) Derl McCrudden, Vasilisa Stepanenko, Evgeniy Maloletka, Jordan Dykstra, Mystylav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, and Raney Aronson-Rath attend the 2023 Sundance Film Festival 20 Days in Mariupol Premiere.
Photo : Amy Sussman/Getty Images“a cinematic siege of the soul … a brave, visceral, merciless masterpiece.”
(Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian, June 11, 2023)
“a relentless and truly important documentary”
(Jason Farago, The New York Times, July 13, 2023)
“The raw footage is largely unembellished, save for Jordan Dykstra’s eerie electronic music score that could easily be appropriated for a horror film (which, of course, 20 Days in Mariupol is, of a sort).”
(Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter, January 20, 2023)
“Aided greatly by an eerie, tonal score by Jordan Dykstra, Mr. Chernov provides a devastatingly matter-of-fact running commentary.”
(Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2023)
“To call 20 Days in Mariupol one of the most important movies of Sundance is to undersell it, but we can hope that the festival, its attendees, and later the rest of the world will see it (PBS Frontline produced the movie). 20 Days in Mariupol will undoubtedly be one of the most important films we have about understanding the conflict and its effects on the people of Ukraine, and it is a rousing call for attention and support that must be given.“
(Nick Allen, Roger Ebert, January 22, 2023)
“20 Days in Mariupol makes you feel the cold of an urban battlefield in winter, the shock of sudden air strikes (including the notorious targeting of a maternity ward), and the determination of Chernov and his colleagues to find a way to document it all.”
(Taylor Antrim, Vogue’s The Best Documentaries of 2023, September 22, 2023)
“Of course it wasn't only the editing, but the score is something to behold. Scored akin to a horror film 20 Days in Mariupol is full of low thumping bass, dissonance, and a low persistent, pervasive presence of dread. It has ambient elements to it that stick with you, increase your heart rate and remind you that this is something that happened only a year ago and is actually still happening today. To avoid hyperbole I'll just say I really mean this, this was one of the best scores I've heard thus far this year. The movie does not work to the same degree without it. 20 Days in Mariupol is elevated to another level of storytelling and empathetic output due to it and I commend Jordan Dykstra on his work!”
(Isaac P. Ale, Film & Froth, May 14, 2023)
“The implacable footage is chillingly scored by Jordan Dykstra, creating an unyielding experience, never offering any respite for the viewer.”
(Debanjan Dhar, High on Films, June 25, 2023)
“a miraculous feat of documentary filmmaking … watching [20 Days in Mariupol] is a humanitarian duty.”
(Tomris Laffy, Harper’s Bazaar, February 6, 2023)
“…his grim narration that, almost diary-like, details his experiences with Michelle Mizner’s superb editing and makes us feel his fears. And also tells the motivations; Jordan Dykstra’s unsettling score completes the nightmare..“
(Nation World News, April 28, 2023)
“This is bleak but essential viewing, deftly edited by Chernov, video technology rendering his camerawork discomfitingly bright and sharp where not long ago we might have been spared a degree of horror by lesser image clarity. Adding discreet notes of suspense is Jordan Dykstra’s original score. Structured by onscreen markers of the days passed, this nonfiction feature may not have a simple narrative arc, but the director’s unpretentious first-person narration and the intensity of the war-crimes evidence compiled make it riveting nonetheless.”
(Dennis Harvey, Variety, January 21, 2023)
“The score’s combination of eerie sound design and twisted instrumentation conjures up the darkness and desperation of the Russo-Ukrainian war itself, while also boosting the dramatic urgency of Chernov’s second-by-second struggle to share his coverage of the onslaught, and quietly emphasizing the unbreakable resolve of the citizens of Mariupol as their fight becomes a worldwide cause. “
(Chris Hadley, Film Score Monthly, August 2023) Read the full interview with Dykstra here.
“Chernov frequently blurs the most severe injuries, but it’s the puddles of blood, dead animals and lifeless limbs half-buried by rubble that indicate the sheer scale of suffering in Mariupol. His jarringly stoic narration and haunting original music by Jordan Dykstra add to the sense that, in Mariupol, nothing is left. This is not a film about President Zelensky’s Churchillian leadership or the heroism of first responders (though if you look, there is some of that).”
(Adam Solomons, IndieWire, January 20, 2023)
“A near-apocalyptic diary of life under siege … you’ll never watch TV news the same way again.”
(Matt Brennan, Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2023)
“It’s be the best and most devastating look at the ongoing war in Ukraine yet, and one of the finest films to ever capture the unfiltered horror of living in a battle zone of all time.“
(Andrew Parker, The Gate, April 29, 2023)
“Accompanied by the somber music composed by Jordan Dykstra“
(Lisa Korneichuk, Hyperallergic, July 13, 2023)
“Sioux City-born, Oscar-bound” feature and interview (PDF)
(Earl Horlyk, Sioux City Journal’s Weekender, Marcy 7, 2024)
Feature in Musicworks Magazine
[Peter] “Kotik continued, ‘The way I would characterize Jordan is that there’s always some idea that is interesting.’” Then, of course, comes the question of the ability to carry out those ideas. What is interesting is this ongoing importance of conceptuality.’ Like the avant-garde composers of Kotik’s generation, Dykstra often leaves things in the score for the performer to figure out. He likes to create little problems — the sort that intrigurges a conductor like Kotik”
“The music of both Pisaro-Liu and Lucier demands considerable focus on the part of listeners; those two composers’ common economy of scale, characterized by prolonged tones and isolated events, is evident in Dykstra’s concert music”
“Dykstra worked on the score [Blow the Man Down] with former Dirty Projectors drummer and frequent collaborator Brian McOmber, building improvisations on keyboards and viola and eventually writing lead sheets that guided further impromptu extrapolation with additional musician friends. While certain moods are determined at the outset, it’s only in the editing that the musical fragments are paired with specific scenes.”
“Dykstra often visited Lucier’s home, where the two experimented with microphones and electronics. In 2022, Dykstra released Out of Our Hands, which features works by himself and Lucier performed by his ensemble Ordinary Affects, on his Editions Vere imprint.”
(Kurt Gottschalk, Musicworks, October, 2022)
Feature in the Sioux City Journal
“A 2003 Bishop Heelan Catholic High School graduate, Dykstra will be one of the speakers at the 17th Sioux City International Film Festival.”
“‘Scoring a documentary is writing music in real time,’ he said. ‘Often time, you’re working off an outline instead of a script. In the case of Plot to Overturn the Election, I was literally scoring the film the weekend before it was slated to air.’”
(Earl Horylk, The Sioux City Journal, September 25, 2022 — archived here)
Praise for PLOT TO OVERTURN THE ELECTION
“This Frontline frightens as much as it enlightens.’”
(John Doyle, The Globe and Mail, March 28, 2022)
“It was almost like finding a key to understanding, you know, why much of the country believes that the election was stolen.”
(Doug Bock Clark, ProPublica, March 29, 2022)
“Lays bare the roots of the misinformation that has built a movement directly impacting Wisconsin and threatening to undermine our representative republic.”
(Joel Patenaude, The Morning Show on Wisconsin Public Radio, March 30, 2022)
“…an absorbing 53-minute documentary in which correspondent A. C. Thompson (who has previously investigated hate groups) tracks down the origins of the Big Lie, the people behind it, and their goal of trying to rig future elections to get the results they want. Although I have been following this story closely, I learned a lot of new things about it.”
(Mano Singham, Free Thought Blogs, April 1, 2022)
Praise for BLOW THE MAN DOWN
“The story’s sharp turns are nicely echoed, too, in the jig-like, clattery score from Brian McOmber and Jordan Dykstra, with the atmosphere often punctuated by professional shanty singer David Coffin (seen on screen as one of those fishermen) occasionally warbling the ominous sea tune ‘Blood Red Roses.’”
(Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2020)
“Composers Jordan Dykstra and Brian McOmber provide a mesmerizing soundtrack that heightens all the emotions that buzz around key moments in the film. Their exceptional use of strings jumps off the screen within the first 20 minutes and leaves audiences paralyzed with its ominous reverberations any time their score seeps its way back into the film.”
(Matt Ward, Cinematic Considerations, April 19, 2020)
“Most admirably, it’s tied together with slick editing by Marc Vives and fantastic music by Jordan Dykstra and Brian McOmber, each scene flowing into the next one perfectly with grand rhythmic procession.”
(Greg Vellante, Spectrum Culture, March 25, 2020)
“…the eerie score is by Brian McOmber and Jordan Dykstra [and] just hearing the music makes the film worth seeing.”
(A. S. Hamrah, The Baffler, July 2020)
Best Movies of 2020 Lists (selected)
Washington Post: “…a film that obeys the most cherished crime-thriller conventions while infusing them with just the right amount of stylization and personal commentary.”
Collider: “Blow the Man Down evokes pared-down thrillers of the ‘70s and ‘80s while confidently standing on its own two feet as it weaves a story that is, refreshingly, using a historically male-dominated genre to tell a story about women and the choices they must make to survive”
Film Pulse: “An atmospheric and witty film, Blow the Man Down dives deep into the secrets and dynamics at the core of a small New England fishing town. Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole bring their film’s setting to life with aplomb, and craft a story that unfolds with surprise and precision, acted out by a commendable cast.”
Praise for HAIL SATAN?
“Although fascinatingly hilarious, ‘Hail Satan?’ is a conventional non-fiction effort on the technical front, but Lane does spike her frames with an offbeat score that reaffirms the quirky tone of the piece with circus-like melodies. Without being facetious, the music here provides an unspoken way to say, ‘It’s not that serious.’ After all, if Satanists were as uptight as their opponents, what would be the fun in being one?”
(Carlos Aguliar, The Wrap, April 19, 2019)
“The musical score, and some of director Lane’s editing strategies, have a way of playing into the more comic aspects. Yet it’s not a mean-spirited affair. In fact, it’s a sly primer in homegrown grassroots activism.”
(Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, May 9, 2019)
Praise for IT COMES AT NIGHT
“The camera glides down a long, dimly lighted corridor. The soundtrack pulses with dissonant chords and heartbeat rhythms.”
(A.O. Scott, New York Times, June 8, 2017)
“Driving these fantasias is a profoundly unsettling score […] whose oscillations lurk like a dormant virus before coming to the fore in horrific crescendos – thunderous, distorted and menacing. Layered modular synths, sinister strings and insistent percussion intertwine with the heightened ambient sound, evoking the experimental work of Krzysztof Penderecki and Toru Takemitsu.”
(Mark Kermode, The Guardian, July 9, 2017)
“… [the] tormented heartbeat of a score heightens the horror every step of the way.”
(Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter, May 26, 2017)
“… [the] score is equally evocative, a constantly building cacophony of noise and chaos that amplifies the ever-escalating on-screen conflicts.”
(Bryan Bishop, The Verge, June 9, 2017)
Praise for DIRTY MACHINES: “THE END OF HISTORY”
“The film hooks you immediately with a stellar opening tracking shot, backed by nerve-racking, dissonant strings.”
(IVAN KANDER, Short of the Week, March 4, 2020)
Praise for OUT OF OUR HANDS
“Lucier’s “Corner Church and High” cites the intersection where Wesleyan’s old music department was located, where one could hear disparate student-produced sounds colliding outside of the building. Sustained long tones on viola, violin, and cello unleash visceral acoustic beating as their sonic veil is pierced by bowed and struck tuned percussion. The tactics are familiar to Lucier admirers, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a wonderful place to get lost in for 20 minutes. Dykstra’s “32 Middle Tones,” an elliptic play on his old address, fits perfectly here, as cellist Laura Cetilia harmonizes—using both her instrument and her voice—with the chord progressions sketched out on viola and violin. Notated silences break each iteration up, changing subtly with every pass, as the two percussionists provide frictive accents.”
(Peter Margasak, The Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp: April 2022, April 27, 2022)
“‘Corner Church and High’ is endless gliss so slow its movements feel ambiguous. A kind of koan. Strings’ beatings establish shortly and vibraphones’ measured march’s decay ripples through them like drops in a pool. Harmonic interactions carve out ethereal streams, glow thrummingly, sing like sirens. ‘32 Middle Tones’ feels similar but cellular. Packets of sustained sounding with walls of silence. Cello tones combine in string trio chords for revolving harmonies, textures. Assorted percussion adding depth of field in jingling shaking, winding scraping, some kind of rolling thunder, and bowed metal. Harmonica too. And sometimes a sung tone so pure it blends with the beatings. Its serial structure highlights its textural nature. Not just the nuances of sounded harmonies - isolated enough to cleanse the palate but not enough to foster forgetfulness - but the character of beatings each emits.”
- Keith Prosk”
(1/15 - Harmonic Series, Keith Prosk, April 1, 2022)
Praise for IN BETTER SHAPE THAN YOU FOUND ME
“Across its 60 minutes, sounds materialize and fade to silence with a calm deliberation that proves an effective antidote to the disquiet of the times.”
(Chicago Reader, Bill Meyer, February 18, 2022)
“…ephemeral, post-modern electro-classicism…”
“…Dykstra and Nutters herein reflect the tenor of our solipsistic times, preferring to embrace the darkness instead of lighting a candle. And damn if it doesn’t work.”
“…a meditational affect that one might associate with musics primed for yoga, deep-listening, and mental focusing, but it’s clear Dykstra and Nutters are far more ambitious…”
(Downtown Music Gallery, Darren Bergstein, January 7, 2022)
“The piano part may form the essence of the piece, and it could function on its own as an ultra-minimal Wandelweiser-type excursion, but Dykstra’s sonic flesh really ups the ante, adding an ever-shifting array of unconventional harmony and sonic disruption so that the music teeters between calmness and subdued terror. The hour-long piece arrives in several discrete sections, separated by brief silences, as if each new movement provides a new perspective on familiar material. It demands total immersion, but the effort is more than worth it.”
(Bandcamp’s The Best Contemporary Classical Albums: October 2021, Peter Margasak, November 3, 2021)
“The long tones emanating from Dykstra’s viola and bowed crotales act upon Nutters’ sparse piano phrases like light, emphasizing certain colors. There are moments where their interactions hold a surface resemblance to exchanges between Eddie Prévost and John Tilbury in later AMM performances, but the actions and decisions that went into making them are quite different, since Nutters and Dykstra collaborated with many miles between them, and not in real time.”
(Dusted Magazine, Bill Meyer, December 9, 2021)
“A spare duo for piano and pitch pipes or viola is backed by soft drones and noises which drift in and out of focus, eliding between pure sound and documentary. Like Luc Ferrari under heavy sedation. An ascending scale interrupts, from time to time. Perhaps events are grouped into subtly distinguished episodes, or perhaps there are merely pauses. More likely, sometimes there is simply silence that emerges to the fore. A sense of place is created, but one where the mood or the tone never settles and so makes place into a lifelike thing.”
(Boring Like A Drill., Ben Harper, October 10, 2021)
“It's only taken about a week for In Better Shape Than You Found Me to become my most heard album of the year. There's something about that barely lit forest path that keeps me coming back, never offering to reveal itself but inviting me deeper and deeper into a menacing atmosphere which never harms me, only ever leaving me in better shape than it found me.”
(Harmonic Series, 1/9, Connor Kurtz, October 1, 2021)
“The gentle pace and duration of the piece induces a faulty memory but recurring soundings recognized as repetitive enough reveal a sturdier structure. Step-pattern crotales melodies seem to signal not the beginnings of changes but that something has already set into motion.”
(Harmonic Series, 1/9, Keith Prosk, October 1, 2021)
Praise for THE ARROW OF TIME
“His microtonal, longform works are mind-warping, but also, dare I say, deeply humanistic and, at times, funny.”
(Peter Margasak, New World Records' Artist Picks, February 4, 2022)
“Brooklyn violist and composer Jordan Dykstra, who studied with Michael Pisaro-Liu, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, and Ulrich Krieger at CalArts, has been pursuing a gratifying strain of deep harmonic exploration for much of the last decade. Most of the works in this fantastic, perception-altering record explore specific harmonic intervals in great detail, producing sumptuous overtones that come to life when activated; Dykstra embraces a flexibility in his writing so that each musician and ensemble can create dynamic new iterations. Inquiry is a key practice for him, but not at the expense of creating something exquisite and compelling.”
(Peter Margasak, Bandcamp’s The Best Contemporary Classical Albums of 2020, December 10, 2020)
#10 Best Modern Composition Album of 2020 (see right)
(Andy Hamilton, The Wire, December 2020)
“Dykstra is representative of a new generation of composers who don’t see barriers between styles and media. Composing both a film score and a rigorously experimental piece is not a contradiction for him.”
( Robert Carl, Fanfare Magazine, May/June 2021)
“Jordan Dykstra: making time slow and stop — and seem to run backwards as well as forwards.”
BBC Radio3 Feature and Interview with Tom Service on the New Music Show episode Processions, March 2021
“As you listen it feels like time is inexorably there and makes itself felt with real aural force, moment to moment. Bravo to this one! It is unforgettable in its own way. After a few hearings I gradually came to find deep form and meaning in it all. Jordan Dykstra chimes in with real importance. And he manages to hit home whatever he does here. Is this the music of the future? Who knows, but it certainly captures a recent feeling, a place where we are as it so all happens. And part of the point is the "so all happens" feeling of this music. Hurrah!”
(Grego Applegate Edwards, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review, February 3, 2021)
Praise for STRESSINGS
“…each [work] has been conceived as a site of exploration for a particular idea or concept; not only does that produce ear-catching results, the listener’s often caught by surprise, too.”
“…change creeps in ever so surreptitiously until that fairly monochromatic opening sound climaxes in a controlled wall.”
“Stressing isn’t for the faint of heart, though that hardly argues against it.”
(Textura, April 2016)
“Stressings by Jordan Dykstra is 100% meditation music. There’s a thought process almost to it akin to a personal isolation chamber. All sensory is deprived of anxiety as Stressings fully places a veil of relaxation among the mindgrapes of all listeners, squashing the nerve senses that deplete contentment.”
(C MONSTER, Tiny Mix Tapes, March 7, 2016)
“[I’m Not a Horse Person, Dog] has a kind of Krzysztof Penderecki vibe, with a rising, droning dissonance spread across 68 violas for its 20-minute runtime.”
(Alan Ranta, Exclaim!, March 23, 2016)
"It sounds like drops of blood, water, oil, all liquids, all forms dripping into vacancy, achieved with a slow attack and sudden release of notes in apparent chromatic scale, until the valve opens wide and each of those individual dissonant droplets come flooding out in a drone.”
(Sean Ongley, Thru Magazine)
Praise for AUDITION
“Even when ‘Yellows,’ the EP's closing track, pushes its way towards the 18-minute mark, nothing about Dykstra's music comes off as bloated or self-serving, and on the cacophonic ‘Rolling Thundara,’ Dykstra casts a mood where others would simply create noise. With Audition, Dykstra doesn't just showcase his tasteful playing and forward-leaning songwriting style, he transforms it into an indisputable brand.”
(Daniel Sylvester, Exclaim!, August 15, 2014)
“An arresting opener, ‘Rolling Thundara’ plays like a statement of purpose in its exotic build-ups of glissandos and high-intensity attack. It's not quite Tony Conrad territory, but it is powerful, especially in those passages when Dykstra layers bluesy expressions over the keening drone. It's refreshing to hear that his formal training hasn't prevented him from infusing his playing with a raw quality that can at times sounds rustic. […] But the coup de grace in this case is ‘Yellows,’ a hypnotic, eighteen-minute setting that blossoms slowly. […] Dykstra exercises great patience in the way he lets this remarkable piece develop; great control is shown in the way each section evolves into the next, and the mutating drone flows with the naturalness of a country stream. Though ‘Yellows’ might be pitched at a relatively quiet level, there's nothing shy about it.”
(Texture, October 2014)
“Like the gloomy, mythical landscape of the Pacific Northwest, Audition is just as haunting, even displaying beauty in its seemingly dissonant sections (of which there are many). It is orchestral music that eschews melody in favor of textural harmony: the sentiment of ambient music, but with the tactility of orchestral instruments. With interspersed field recordings from the farm where it was written, Audition is an ode to nature in its disturbing beauty and mythical wonder, an attempt to express through music the feeling of staring at a mountain.”
(Zack Wilks, Impose, 2014)
“…if you’re digging the atmosphere swirling around the strings in ‘Darkened Bar,’ you’re really in for a treat, as Jordan Dykstra’s newest Audition will take you through layers of scenes and situations. Each track is a visualization in itself…”
(C MONSTER, Tiny Mix Tapes, July 29, 2014)
Praise for COLLEGE HOTEL
“College Hotel suggests that the three are most comfortable operating in a zone where alternate tuning systems, minimalism, deep listening, and microtonality are in play and where long-form settings of twenty-minute (or longer) durations aren't uncommon. Though only one of the recording's five settings cracks the twenty-minute mark in this case, even the shorter pieces exude a forceful meditative character.”
“If there's a unifying element in play, it's Dykstra's viola, which in its bowed form naturally engenders associations with early drone minimalism, but the instrument doesn't surface on all five settings.”
“If there's a go-to track here, it's arguably the central one, ‘On the Spectrum,’ for how hypnotically it captures Dykstra and Jenkins stretching out layers of string drones. Bowed tones extend for minutes at a time, some hovering high above and others far below, and the downward alterations in pitch that emerge towards the end occur so gradually they could escape notice.”
(Textura, August 2016)