Herman Dune

Drawing from sources that stretched from Neil Young through Sonic Youth to Pavement, the French anti-folk outfit Herman Düne built a worldwide cult audience that counted the influential BBC radio host John Peel among its supporters. The lineup of sibling singers and guitarists André and David-Ivar Herman Düne together with drummer Omé generated a run of self-released cassettes and CD-Rs and crisscrossed the U.S. and Europe before the Prohibited label issued the band’s first official album, Turn Off the Light, in mid-2000. That September Peel invited the trio to tape a BBC session; the results moved him to bring the musicians to his home for a live Christmas broadcast. After the group settled in Paris it recorded 2001’s They Go to the Woods for the respected Amerindie label Shrimper. When Omé departed, Néman Herman Dune took the drum chair and the band returned later that year with its second LP, Switzerland Heritage. Following the 2002 split release The Whys and the Hows of Herman Düne & Cerberus Shoal, shared with the U.S. emo band Cerberus Shoal, the trio served as backing unit for Canadian singer/songwriter Julie Doiron on a French tour. Two further albums appeared in 2003: Mas Cambios on Track & Field and Mash Concrete Metal Mushrooms on Shrimper. After issuing several solo projects on their own, André and David-Ivar reassembled Herman Düne for the 2005 album Not on Top, which featured Doiron on bass and vocals. Their Source Etc. debut Giant reached stores in 2006; late that year André Herman Dune exited to launch a solo career under the name Stanley Brinks. Reduced to a duo, the band dropped the umlaut for 2008’s Next Year in Zion. After a hiatus spent founding their own imprint, Herman Dune resurfaced in 2011 with the label-titled album Strange Moosic. The same label released the band’s score for the film Mariage á Mendoza in 2013. Around the same time David-Ivar launched his solo project Black Yaya.