We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Myles Byrne-Dunhill a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Myles, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I think the most crucial thing anyone can do is to follow their intuition. It’s so easy to get hung up on what other people’s expectations are going to be or how they might perceive what you are doing, but holding onto that initial spark and trusting that feeling deep in your guts will ultimately bring you fulfillment.

I don’t really believe that you can speed up the process of finding out what kind of artist you’re going to be. That’s something you’re constantly exploring in your work. Over time, things begin to emerge and take shape, and then you can kind of connect all the various threads once you’ve explored different outlets of expression.

One of the biggest skills that not too many people will recommend is to take lots and lots of risks. When you realize that not everything you do is going to be your favorite thing, you can kind of relax a little bit and just enjoy the process and see where the conclusion takes you. If you embrace chaos and use it to your advantage, happy accidents will begin to occur that have the potential to astound you.

It’s so important not to compare what you are doing to what others are doing. That can really produce a mental block that can be hard to overcome. Sometimes as an artist, when we have so much control over every aspect of something, we can get lost in the grand sea of possibilities, and that can overwhelm us. When we focus not so much on what we are trying to force something to be and rather let what we are working on guide us into letting the thing be what it wants to be, it can produce very honest results.

Myles, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up spending a ton of time watching TV, and if I saw some awesome toy commercial, I wouldn’t be able to contain my excitement, and I’d find a way to make my own version of that toy using whatever I had at arm’s length. This was fundamental to my outlook on building things myself rather than waiting for someone to give me something. It’s also a big reason why I gravitated toward the DIY attitude of the punk scene as a teenager, which really got me interested in how people were creating things outside of mainstream society and for a smaller community of like-minded individuals. However, as I got older, I eventually grew frustrated with the conventions of alternative subcultures, and before long came up with my own personal counterculture called hunk, which was a balance between the impractical idealism of the hippie movement and the strict nonconformist ethos of the punk movement. I felt that the two actually stabilized each other like “yin and yang” and that they worked better united. I also wanted this to be an anti-movement that emphasized the individual’s beliefs over a collective ideology. It was from this philosophy that I set out to have a renewed sense of creativity and make art more frequently than ever before.

Making music was something that I always had an interest in, and I imagined I’d probably be in a band by the time I was in my early twenties. When I had a hard time finding other musicians to play with, I decided to go solo with an experimental noise pop project called Treasure Hunt and started my own record label to distribute albums. That was how Slyme Records (Slyme being an anagram of my name) came about. After releasing a handful of albums myself, I slowly began to garner the attention of a dozen or so experimental and avant-garde labels, as well as some sonically adventurous musicians, which enabled me to branch out. It was several years later when what would start as an elaborate inside joke quickly turned into a new venture, Pedicure Records. This is a platform where I release music from internet pop visionaries and electronic eccentrics from all over the world. It has been going on for over ten years now and shows no signs of slowing down.

In between doing all of this, I also found my footing as a filmmaker. I established Primordial Soup Productions after doing professional editing for a few years, and having limited resources, I was inspired by this production company called Stag Films to create “green movies,” which are essentially films that are made entirely from pre-existing footage. I personally call these films “remakes” because of their assembled nature. Lifesavers: The Movie was my first experiment, combining footage from a couple of ’80s puppet horror movies, dubbing the actors’ voices, and providing original audio to create an all-new film. Over the years, I’ve executed many variations using this concept and have done everything from meme mashup films to feature-length book adaptations and eventually two video game adaptations, which will be coming soon.

Whatever leftover ideas I accumulate manage to fill up my notebooks, either manifesting themselves later in the form of other art projects or my writing. Usually when I have a few tidbits that share a common theme, I turn them into a short story. I’m mostly interested in the format of short stories because I find the medium a great challenge to try to fit loads of information without needlessly padding out pages with a lot of unnecessary details and expositions. I self-publish these to Kindle every so often under the umbrella of my literary publishing company, Green Eggs and Hamlet.

This leads me to the biggest takeaway I want to get at, which is that as an artist, any and all creative impulses need to be explored, and in order for them to materialize, it is important to write them down. Writing down your thoughts and ideas before they drift off into the abyss is such a necessity. It doesn’t matter if you have the most half-baked idea in the history of mankind; it deserves to be scrawled out on a sheet of paper or typed up and saved for a rainy day. Then when the time comes, you can dip your hat into the well and have a plethora of options waiting there for you. It’s shocking how many great ideas get lost in the void because someone didn’t take a couple of seconds to write them down.

There’s probably a lot that I’m leaving out, but I hope this gives a behind-the-scenes look into the universe of art I’ve created for myself and why I love doing the things that I do. I’ve never felt the need to limit myself when there is so much inexplicable wonder in making things and inventing your own artistic bubble. I’m not such a rare case either. I would encourage anyone and everyone to try as many things as their heart desires if they are having fun, discovering new things about themselves, and appreciating those moments that take them way outside of their comfort zone and somewhere else new entirely.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I find that people who are really into the arts are already supporting artists out of their own enthusiasm and willingness to be a participant. It’s almost kind of like a collateral thing where if you enjoy something, you’re probably already involved in some aspect. However, there could be more public funding for arts programs in general. The way things are set up nowadays, most people find art to have lost its value, in large part due to the accessibility the internet has provided in having everything at your fingertips, which would’ve been great initially but has allowed companies to exploit things along the lines of streaming when it comes to media or allowing algorithms to control what people are interacting with, and so most people are losing interest in individual voices and giving attention to these platforms that are only focused on generating capital over promoting unique visions. If you want to support artists, look for them outside of corporations that spoon-feed you content and get involved with your local community. Attending shows, purchasing things directly, or even just having a small interaction with artists goes a long way in making them feel seen or heard.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I think it’s pretty incredible to visualize something in your mind and then see it come to life before your very eyes. Bringing something out of the abstract into the tangible is an addictive and powerful feeling, but it also makes you feel connected to something larger than yourself. The reward usually comes from the ‘doing.’ Putting the pieces together, seeing what works and what doesn’t. But it can be especially mind-blowing when the finished piece is even better than what you originally envisioned. It’s a vibe that makes you feel part of something cosmic and conscious.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mylesdunhill.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plexureisland
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PRIMORDIALSOUPPRODUCTIONS
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mylesdunhill
• Other: https://bsky.app/profile/mylesdunhill.bsky.social

Image Credits

Savannah Dunhill