New Zealand composer and experimental musician Dean Roberts was born in Auckland on March 24, 1975. Studying at the University of Auckland in the Creative Arts department in 1994, he was taught by Philip Dadson, a multi-disciplinary artist known for his sound installations and his work with the group From Scratch. At the same time, he worked alongside Dion Workman and Rosy Parlane in the rock trio Thela, which released two albums on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. Trained as a guitarist, Dean Roberts became familiar with electronic instruments and computer-assisted composition, which opened up prospects in the field of electroacoustic music, in addition to his affinities with post-rock, minimalist music and the drone line. Between 1995 and 2000, he released four albums under the pseudonym White Winged Moth, including one in collaboration with Flying Saucer Attack and Main. In parallel, with the creation of his own label Formacentric Disk, the albums Moth Park / Soundtrack to Utopia (1997), All Cracked Medias (1998) and And the Black Moths Plays the Grand Cinema (2000) were released under his own name, with support from Tim Barnes, Charles Curtis and Matt Valentine. In 2000, he also released Aluminium, the fruit of his collaboration with Werner Dafeldecker, before forming the group Autistic Daughters with him, after composing the album Be Mine Tonight, released in 2003. Dean Roberts has also contributed to other projects initiated by Achim Wollscheid, The Tower Recordings collective, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Boris Hauf, Klaus Filip, Polweschsel, Lawrence English, Mattin and Julia Riedy. In a style that alternates long instrumental tracks and shorter pieces with different musicians, the multi-instrumentalist who has devoted himself to the aforementioned adventures returned to solo work in 2011 with the album Vianolas, followed by Live in Philadelphia with Rafael Toral (2018), Not Fire (2020) and Auditions: Red Memory with Valerio Tricoli (2021). 2023 saw the release of an unreleased album, May 99, produced with Charles Curtis and Alan Licht. On August 10, 2024, Dean Roberts died at the age of 49.
