Boris Bunnik (Monographic)

Boris Bunnik is a producer with an innate ability to create multiple musical personalities, I would personally define him as restless and hoarder of new identities, as an inquiring and versatile soul who likes to be completely immersed in everything he does, whether creating music or playing live, and because he is such a creative soul and publishes so much music, Boris has many different outlets for his different moods.

Boris Bunnik is a contemporary artist with a trajectory that begins in 2007 as Conforce, a few years later would come the unfolding of musical personality, but with this alias shows from the outset the great ability to combine analog and digital to create atmospheric pieces well designed, either house, techno or dub-techno.ç

2007 was when the Dutch producer released his first work and did so in one of the major record companies of his country, Rush Hour Recordings, a label based in Amsterdam that integrates several subsellos that over time have been decreasing its activity.

Our Concern is that first work by Conforce, a reference that is published with an original theme and two versions of its own. With this release we can see Boris Bunnik’s predilection with Conforce to identify with this nickname with a style where atmospheric pads take more prominence than the rest.

Boris Bunnik makes the Conforce project profitable during the first years of his career, from 2007 to 2011 Conforce publishes in important record companies such as Field Records, Curle Recordings or the Dutch Delsin, with the latter debuts in 2010 with a single called Grace, a great work where he exposes what he does best as Conforce with a mixture between deep techno and dub techno where prevail over all those atmospheric landscapes that identify this artist so much.

Until 2011 Boris Bunnik is Conforce, but this year he suffers a split of personalities and creates most of the pseudonyms with which he is or has been producing other records. Some of these aliases have a fairly circumstantial step in the Dutchman’s career and have only appeared in a single release, but other pseudonyms has managed to create parallel projects that in addition to becoming popular are detached from Conforce.

Hexagon is one of those names that Bunnik has been using since 2011, but this alias is linked to Conforce with a jointly released album. Escapism is that album with which Boris Bunnik signs both as Conforce and as Hexagon, as a back to back of identities.

2011 was a year of maximum activity for Boris Bunnik, some of their identities as they appeared remained later in standby, as was the case of K2VX or Mi-24, we can not say if in the future has planned to recover these projects, but in the case of other pseudonyms he has provided it continuity, as is the case of Vernon Felicity, who also premiered in 2011 with a first launch on the Dutch platform Clone.

Boris Bunnik publishes as Vernon Felicity since 2011, since then we have verified what has been the evolution with this pseudonym that firstly sounded quite similar to Conforce but later we have been able to verify how it began to introduce acid lines and resources of the most purist electronics, especially with the rhythmic elements. There is also an environment of saturation in many of the compositions.

In 2016 Vernon Felicity released several singles on different labels, with Delft he signs Atlantis, this label of the American La-4a fits perfectly with the sound that Boris Bunnik has developed with Vernon Felicity.

Once again, in 2011 Boris Bunnik doubles his personality to create the most prolific pseudonym after Conforce, more prolific and more different from other projects because Versalife is the Dutch producer’s bet to create electro. Surely this is the pseudonym that most dislocated his audience when his identity was known, Boris Bunnik was for all his audience atmosphere and varieties of techno and tech house to deep and dub, and not that that harmonious part disappears completely with Versalife. Although most of the productions created under this alias can be categorized as quite direct electro, he also makes electro tracks charged with melodic elements and atmospheric pads.

Boris Bunnik has signed as Versalife with several labels, with Clone publishes much of his work with all the aliases he has, but in addition to this Dutch label we must also highlight Transcendent, label created by Bunnik himself in 2012 where he publishes releases such as Hexagon, Conforce, Silent Harbour and Versalife.

Polychange is a release signed by Versalife with the British label Brokntoys in 2016, four tracks with one of them reminiscent of his facet with Conforce, but with the other 3 he manages to create a structure completely related to electro.

Boris Bunnik had already covered styles like techno, tech-house or electro, but he needed to launch for a more experimental environment and in 2012, he creates another project called Silent Harbour with which he mixes genres like dub techno with idm and ambient. It is a more experimental facet with which he publishes a first album in 2012 with the Danish label Echocord, another work of long duration in 2015 in Deep Sound Channel, and returns again in 2018 in Echocord, but this time he signs as Conforce and Silent Harbour and creates a mixture of styles between the two concepts.

With only 3 releases we have seen how Bunnik has moved the style of Silent Harbour to be closer to what he has always done with Conforce, we can’t be sure of anything because with only 3 references, and 3 years interval in each, we can not judge it, but encourages to think that with Silent Harbour has decided to deviate to a more conventional style, because in 2018 creates a new project to work with more experimental genres.

Silent Harbour publishes Noctiluca in 2018, and what Boris Bunnik shows with this release is a move away from experimental style of the first two albums, it could be because it was already planned to migrate the style to another project such as Severnaya, a pseudonym with which he publishes a first work in 2018 with which he goes further than with Silent Harbour. Severnaya is experimental electronics but it is closer to the ambient, it is more spiritual.

Boris Bunnik is versatile and multifaceted. With Conforce, Bunnik could have accommodated himself because it has brought him quite a lot of popularity, but he is a restless soul that must be dignified for his great work he is doing with all his projects.