Aaron Dilloway returns to Dais Records with ‘No Skill Comedy Mind Reading’
Aaron Dilloway releases “No Skill Comedy Mind Reading” on Dais Records on 30 October 2026, his first solo album since 2017, with US dates in September.
Aaron Dilloway - Photo by Doug Coombe
Nine years after “The Gag File”, Aaron Dilloway has a new solo album. The American experimental musician releases “No Skill Comedy Mind Reading” on Dais Records on 30 October 2026, his third proper solo LP and the first since 2017. Dilloway builds the record from 8-track tape loops, feedback-shrouded found sounds, field recordings and vocal improvisation, and it collects material drawn from close to a decade of solo work.
Dilloway treats the album as the closing part of a set of three. He described the connection between them in the announcement, and he did so without separating the humour from the damage: “I almost feel like they’re kind of part of one piece. All three records are trying to find humor in the worst possible situations. Depending on who is listening and what their mindset is, they could be seen as funny or just horrifying, horrible records.” The sequence starts with “Modern Jester”, issued by his own Hanson Records in 2012, and runs through “The Gag File”, his first release for Dais Records in 2017.
Eight tracks make up the album: “Raw Hyde”, “My Brain Has Finished Growing”, “Forced Auctioneer”, “Find A New Way To Laugh”, “Bring Me The Head Of The Unknown Comic”, “Possession Audition Tape”, “The Levitation Hacker” and “Supporting Actor (for Pieter & Phil)”. Dais Records has shared the first track, “Find A New Way To Laugh”, as official audio, and the album is available to pre-order.
What shaped ‘No Skill Comedy Mind Reading’
Three reference points sit behind the record: the sound design of Alvin Lucier, Andy Milligan’s low-budget 1989 horror film “The Weirdo”, and the film composer Hugo Montenegro. Dilloway acquired a set of Montenegro’s belongings through a storage-unit auction, including notes from the composer’s early electronic experiments, and material from that find feeds several of the album’s more unsettled passages. The laughter running through “Bring Me The Head Of The Unknown Comic” nods sonically to Nurse With Wound and thematically to the paper-bag-headed 1970s American television comedian.
Tape hiss is treated as material rather than as a defect. Dilloway traces that back to the cassettes he was given as a teenager, by the Misfits and Circle Jerks among others, on which the artifacts of repeated dubbing had become part of what he was hearing: “I am into the idea of building all of these layers and turning them into something else. Like when I play live, things can get harsher than my recorded music, and for this, I wanted to get that feeling, for these blasts to be loud, but a bit more subdued. That complete static sound, almost like you’re underwater.”
The drone that opens the album comes from two Nepali sarangi bows rubbed against each other, an instrument Dilloway encountered during the period he spent living and recording in Nepal from late 2004. On the B-side, “Possession Audition Tape” cuts up phrases he reads from a book about an eighteenth-century French religious group given to public disruption. The closing “Supporting Actor (for Pieter & Phil)” is a synth and organ rhythm-machine piece derived from music he made for Pieter Schoolwerth and Phil Vanderhyden’s film “Supporting Actor”.
The album took shape alongside other work. “This record has kind of consumed my head since I finished ‘The Gag File’ [2017]. At first, I was thinking it would be more of a pop record, but then the Lucrecia project kind of got that out of my system. It started to flow more like my live sets,” Dilloway said, referring to “Lucy & Aaron”, his 2021 album with Lucrecia Dalt.
Aaron Dilloway tour dates 2026
Dilloway plays five US shows across September and October:
- 25 September 2026 – Los Angeles, CA, USA – Threshold
- 26 September 2026 – Cleveland, OH, USA – The Bent Mace
- 8 October 2026 – Chicago, IL, USA – Empty Bottle
- 9 October 2026 – Louisville, KY, USA – The B-Side
- 30 October 2026 – Pittsburgh, PA, USA – Woodstreet Galleries
About Aaron Dilloway
Aaron Dilloway was born on 13 May 1976 and grew up in Brighton, Michigan. As a teenager he began going to house shows in nearby Ann Arbor, formed the group Galen in the 1990s and then joined Couch, the band Galen had opened for at its first show. After moving to Ann Arbor he played with experimental and noise groups including Universal Indians, and co-founded Wolf Eyes, with which he performed until 2004.
Late in 2004 he moved to Nepal, where he recorded his own material, field recordings and Nepalese radio broadcasts. He relocated to Ohio in 2007, worked with Emeralds among others, and settled in Oberlin, where he runs the label, record shop and mailorder Hanson Records. His first solo LP, “Modern Jester”, appeared on Hanson Records in 2012, and “The Gag File” followed on Dais Records in 2017. Between the two he kept up a steadier flow of tape releases and collaborative records.
Two collaborative albums arrived in 2021: “Lucy & Aaron” with Lucrecia Dalt on Hanson Records, and “Body/Dilloway/Head” with Kim Gordon and Bill Nace’s Body/Head on Three Lobed Recordings. He has also realised John Cage’s 88-tape-loop piece “Rozart Mix” and written an original score for “The Absence of Milk In The Mouths of the Lost”. “No Skill Comedy Mind Reading” is his third solo album and his second for Dais Records, arriving nine years after the last one.
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