Dillon

Dillon is the recording name of Andrés Dillon, an Argentine artist. The name also appears on music platforms for other acts, including a singer-songwriter from Brazil and a rapper, DJ, beatmaker and chef based in Atlanta, but the artist described here is the Argentina-born performer.

Background

Dillon is the stage name of Dominique Dillon de Byington. She is born in São Paulo, Brazil, and moves to Cologne at the age of five. She later moves to Berlin at 18. She begins writing self-composed songs as a teenager, first working them out at her parents’ piano and sharing them online through YouTube and MySpace.

Early releases

Her early work draws attention with the song “The Rate of Yesterday”, which leads to interest from the Berlin label Kitty-Yo. The label releases her first digital single, “C Unseen Sea”, in 2008. She then issues the three-track EP Ludwig on Combination Record. These early recordings establish her mix of lo-fi pop, hip-hop elements and restrained electronic textures.

Debut album and style

Dillon’s debut album, This Silence Kills, appears in 2011. It gathers songs she has written previously and is produced with Thies Mynther and Tamer Fahri Özgöenec. The album is noted for its piano-driven writing, cold bass lines and minimal techno influence, placing it between chanson pop and fragile electronica. Her voice and piano playing are central to songs about ordinary life, emotional tension and human experience.

Her approach is described through a strong emphasis on intuition, honesty and emotion, and she treats genre boundaries as unimportant. Her songs move between jazz, piano-pop and small-scale electronic forms, with words and feeling kept at the forefront.

Collaborations and live activity

Dillon works with the Cologne duo Coma on “Aiming for Destruction”, which appears on BPitch’s Werkschau compilation in 2011. She also attracts support from DJ Koze and is invited by Tocotronic to support their Schall & Wahn tour in 2010.

She tours in Germany and appears at festivals including Melt!, Dockville, New Fall and Berlin Festival.

Second album

In 2013, Dillon begins work on her second album, The Unknown, recorded in three weeks in the same studio and room at Clouds Hill Recordings in Hamburg with Mynther and Özgöenec. She describes the material as poems set to music rather than a conventional album. The record continues the emotional and narrative style of This Silence Kills.