While recording at a Pennsylvania cabin situated near the Revolutionary War's Battle of Brandywine, TJ Dumser experienced an unexplained moment of paralysis accompanied by physical pain and overwhelming sorrow. Historical research later revealed six soldiers from that battle were never accounted for, creating an unexpected connection between past and present, absence and presence. This liminal experience became the conceptual foundation for a project dedicated to guiding listeners beyond surface-level existence into deeper awareness, a project TJ named Six Missing.
Austin-based composer TJ Dumser now creates ambient soundscapes that invite listeners to pause. Six Missing reveals sonic environments where synthesizers, processed guitars, and carefully constructed textures mingle to form music existing somewhere between meditation and art. His latest EP on the Nettwerk label, Gentle Breath, signals a marked evolution in his approach to ambient composition—darker, more complex, and born from personal struggle rather than serene contemplation.
The catalog Dumser has built since 2017—from the meditative expanses of Here For Now to the electro-acoustic dialogues of counter:point with neoclassical artist Clariloops—shows an artist whose technical evolution mirrors internal development. Each release functions as a document and an emotional milestone. His compositions have earned critical acclaim from outlets like Headphone Commute and CLASH, while collaborations with artists including Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Jamie Lidell have expanded his palette. Yet the external validation and productivity masked an unsustainable rhythm, eventually forcing a confrontation with fundamental questions about creativity and wellbeing. Gentle Breath arrives as both a symptom and remedy.
Host Lawrence Peryer recently hosted TJ Dumser on the Spotlight On podcast for a wide-ranging discussion about what makes Six Missing tick. Topics include the intentional spaciousness of the Gentle Breath EP, the imperfection of vintage electronic machines, the role of improvisation in Six Missing’s music, and how Risky Business led to an ambient epiphany. You can listen to the entire conversation on the Spotlight On player below. The transcript has been edited for length, clarity, and flow.
Manufacturing Spaciousness
Lawrence Peryer: Did you go into Gentle Breath with a specific concept in mind?
TJ Dumser: I did. I wanted to create something that felt like space. Not outer space, but room to breathe, room to exist in. I wanted to create these moments where the listener could find their own meditation within it. I think one of the beautiful things about ambient music is that it doesn't demand your attention like pop music or rock music does. It invites you to come in and leave when you want. You can engage with it as deeply as you want or let it be in the background.
So, I wanted to create pieces with enough structure to feel composed but enough openness to improvise. That's the balance I'm always trying to strike. And then, I wanted each piece to have its emotional color palette. So "Morning Light" has this warm, hopeful feeling, whereas "Distant Memory" has more melancholy tones. Each piece is almost like a room in a house you can visit.
Lawrence: Do you think there’s a connection between physical spaciousness and the spaciousness in the Six Missing music?
TJ: Living in New York, physical space was at such a premium that I had to create mental and emotional space through my music. Now, I have more physical space, but I'm still creating that emotional spaciousness through the sounds.
I think what I have tried to do—and what I think has been an interesting side effect of leaving New York for Austin—is manufacturing that spaciousness for myself. That feeling of the chaos, the outward noise, and the kind of speed and pace at which New York City moved forced me naturally to go inward and find that calm. I’m in my own bubble here, and I can observe it all from the safety of almost stepping out of the stream.
Moving to Austin, I lost a lot of that natural inward time. So I think what I tried to do with the music, subconsciously or not, is allow me to find that space again, because I had been lacking it. Many anxious and obsessive thoughts had too much room in my space, so I had to manufacture it for myself. How I did that was just moving Six Missing at such a pace over the last few years—writing and being very regimented about what I release. Through doing that, and now having the perspective of hindsight, that spaciousness needed to find a new home, and it's been coming out in the music as self-soothing almost in a way.
Lawrence: That's a skill that not many people come by naturally, the ability to self-soothe. We don't often talk about it that way but the inability to do that leads to potentially problematic behavior. You're looking for someone else to soothe or calm you, or there are all kinds of people and things you can take refuge in. If you don't have that ability to channel and self-regulate, it's the root of many destructive tendencies.
TJ: I think acknowledging that I have addictive behaviors in my life is something that I've become more acutely aware of. My life is split in two ways: professional—film, TV, and commercial advertising—and then music and composition. It’s funny to see how the sand gets poured into either bucket. I think the more crazed I've gotten with the professional side or more intense, the music has taken on a different form. The pendulum swings in the other way; it's my refuge, my respite, my place where I don't receive notes, feedback, and meetings. This is for me. So it's like this fine dance, continually being human.
Lawrence: What was your relationship with ambient music before Six Missing?
TJ: I had never really grown up listening to ambient music. I was a big fan of soundtracks, which was maybe the primer to ambient music. I loved film scores. Even as a kid, I would get the cassette or the CD of the original soundtrack to the movies I loved and play and listen to them. I loved how music created a mood and a vibe and how it could change my perspective of what was happening in my life.
One of my favorite things to do in New York was pop on headphones and just listen to a score, a soundtrack, and float through the streets and see how that changed how I was experiencing my day. One day, I left work feeling sick and was waiting for the subway. I had seen Risky Business recently, and Tangerine Dream did the score to a lot of that film. I didn’t know much about them, though. I wanted to check them out. So I put on Tangerine Dream's Phaedra, and between my fevered state and the ambient world that record created, I was like in this magic moment of in-between reality and dream worlds, and I was like, "Holy shit. This is incredible. What is this? This track is like 18 minutes long, and wow, this is fantastic. It goes to these places. It's hypnotic. It's mesmerizing. It does everything a film score does but with synths, guitars, and effects." And being a musician, I was just hook, line, and sinker in on that.
So that was kind of the thing that blew the top off the box for me with ambient music. And then I went to the classics like Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Paul Horn, Suzanne Ciani, Wendy Carlos, like all of these just giants in the world. And I was rediscovering, it was almost like discovering the Beatles for the first time being like, "Wow, there's so much here." That was what got me into it.
It Wanted to Be Played
Lawrence: Is your music through-composed, or is there a generative or improvisational element?
TJ: It depends on what I'm feeling. Like just even this morning, I turned on a synth, just out of sight, the Korg PolySix, because it's one of those things where I feel like everything is a living, breathing thing that has feelings and emotions, and I'm like, "I haven't played this in a while. It probably feels bad about itself. I should probably play it and spend some time with it."
And I started playing, and something started happening. I couldn’t start recording fast enough, and I was like, “Oh wow, that’s the pull I felt towards this thing because it wanted to be played.” (I know I'm getting a little woo-woo!) So, at that moment, I had no idea what would come out, but I'm just kind of running with it now, seeing where that thread goes. I captured it, put it in the machine, and now I will come back to that improvisational performance, either later today or weeks later, in some cases years later, and come back to it with a different head and take a compositional approach.
So there are both aspects all the time. And then, within the modular EuroRack stuff, there is a generative element that I like and appreciate because it's throwing curveballs at me that I get to figure out how to make interesting. And I like that element of it.
Before I left the city and I was doing Six Missing, it looked a lot different. It was improvisational, with a lot of guitar pedalboard looping things. And I would invite friends like I'd book a show, and then I would just invite friends to play with me the night of the show. I did a sold-out Rockwood set and invited a friend I hadn't seen in two years. And he showed up 15 minutes before the soundcheck and I was like, "What's up, what are we doing?"
So, that element of existing without a net is thrilling to me. So I try to do that in the studio as much as possible because it's so much fun to feel that feeling and then come back to it with a clearer head with your editing brain. If you're a writer, you do that maybe sometime, just kind of get it all out on the page, get all the ideas out, and then come back and figure out what should stay, what should go, or scrap the whole thing.
Lawrence: I had a similar experience with a band I was in in the early mid-nineties in New Haven. A lot of times, most of us didn't know who was even going to be there. It could be anything from guitar, keyboards, saxophone, trumpet, turntable, drummer, harmonium, whatever, and very similar to what you were saying, it would be 15 minutes before we had to do something, and somebody would say, "Let's start in D" or "Yeah, such and such thing was in the news today. So think about that." (laughter)
TJ: We'd do the same thing. I'd say, “Let's start in B and see where it goes."
Music is my church. It's my everything. So when I would get up with other musicians, I never felt nervous about it, like, "Oh, we're going to be a total train wreck in front of these people.” Nah, we're here communicating together. This whole experience will be more or less, at the risk of sounding silly, like spiritual. We're going to go somewhere with it. That's what you were talking about—I would have been so on board to be called up to do a show like that.
What I've always loved about improvisation is that communication, that listening, that subconscious connection that the musicians have with each other and taking the audience, lifting them as well, and rising and falling and feeling that breathing energy that happens at a show.
So here I am, a lover of being in a band and with other musicians. And now I turn into a total solo artist. It's the polar opposite of everything that we're even talking about. The communication that happens is with myself and with machines and all of this. So I kind of crave that collaborative element a little bit every once in a while.
A Depth You Can't Fake
Lawrence: How do you convey meaning in instrumental music, particularly this music? Because clearly, you have a lot to express, right? Music is playing a very important emotional function for you. How do you do that in the absence of words?
TJ: Well, I'm lyric-blind. There are songs I have listened to since growing up that I don’t know the words to, but I know the music, the bass lines, the melodies, the drum fills, and everything else. So I think that getting into instrumental was a very easy leap in that way, but as far as conveying the emotion, I don't know if I actually know.
I think I’m trying to make the boundary between myself, my emotions, my feelings, and the recording process as seamless as possible. And that's why I like vintage equipment because I feel like they also have a lot of emotion in them. You put your hand on a physical knob, and you turn the knob. They're reacting differently to the weather even—like if it's cold, the synth is tight, and it's uptight, and it's not loose, and it's rigid, so you get a different sound out of it than you do on a warm, humid day where it's looser, more rubbery. I'm like, "Me too, man. I’m different every single day. Let's see how you are today."
And so, I think I try to use the tools to convey the emotion. So, it's selecting sounds and vibe curation. It feels like I'm designing the sounds to match up to the emotion I'm trying to convey and then, of course, through words and writing about it and through videos and Instagram and all that, trying to maybe give context to it.
Lawrence: What about titles? At what stage does a title come into the process, and are the titles meaningful?
TJ: I was in a band where we would always change the song’s title, which would get frustrating. We'd start a session, call it "Dance Shoes," and then, for me, that paints a picture and color in my head, and everything that I do is within that lens of "Dance Shoes." And then we're gonna change it to "Velvet Suit." I'm like, "Yeah, but now what we're doing with that doesn't feel like the original motivation.”
The song title, for me, often dictates the vibe I'm creating and is very much tied to it. It creates a literal feeling, like a visceral feeling, a color, or a cinematic lens in which I see what I'm trying to do. I want to see what it says first and then go from there with it. I either change it mid-stream or leave it be and never change it again because I’m also a big believer in your gut instinct, your first instinct being the one that is the right thing before your brain gets in the way and starts thinking about something. If the song says it's "Delicate," that's what it's called.
Lawrence: I've enjoyed the Gentle Breath EP. Every once in a while, I come across some work that I feel like, "Did they pull my profile and make this album for me?" The modular synths here do something special to the somatic experience.
TJ: Well, thank you so much. That's great to know because this record, in particular, is very personal, as I was trying to work through a lot of stuff. I was worried that that could be potentially off-putting to the listening audience.
Lawrence: Was it successful for you in terms of the help you wanted from it?
TJ: I think so. I don't see a way in which it wouldn't be. It's not fair to say because I'm here where I am now, trying to experience where I was then. So I have to trust that what I was doing then at the moment was what was right and what had to happen.
So, of course, it feels good to put it out and let it go. And now it's not mine anymore. It's everyone else's and they'll have their experience with it. And that's the point of it. And that's why making music, making art is just so important and so fun. And that's why I don't know why we would automate joy and art with AI. I mean, I get its benefits, but there's something that happens when you come across something that's crafted by a human being for human beings.
Lawrence: I think a lot about the music of the late '70s and the early '80s, especially the synth-driven music of that era and the analog nature of the synths before everything went fully digital. We still feel the overtones and the distortion, like the imperfection, the human part of it. It goes beyond nostalgia because it seems to affect people who weren't there the first time. They're just drawn to the aesthetic.
TJ: I've been using a lot of tape lately, a lot of reel-to-reel. It's the same way I find depth in film—35 mm, 16 mm, even 8 mm, real film. There's a depth that you can't just fake because it's this chemical process of light hitting paper and using a human; it's a surprise to the filmmaker many times what they’ll get in that shot when they develop it."
And I think the same thing with tape machines. Sometimes my power fluctuates, and the tape jumps a little faster, and it's like, "Hey, how cool. This thing is alive." There's just a depth you can't fake. I think you can get close to it with a lot of digital reproductions, which is great because somebody just starting can't spend $3,000 on a reel-to-reel. Having a plug-in version of it to get that kind of sound is just as good. But I agree with you. I think the music has an imprint, specifically in the synths. There's an echo of humanity that people latch on to subconsciously that makes these things live far beyond their creators.
Visit Six Missing at sixmissing.com and TJ Dumser at tjdumser.com and follow Six Missing on Instagram, SoundCloud, and YouTube. Purchase the Gentle Breath EP by Six Missing from Bandcamp or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice.
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