The project of Cantor Dust began around the turn of the century as Mark Klassen began the task of writing and recording songs.  Living in a basement apartment in Winnipeg, he embarked on the journey of his first album, You’ll, an EP of 5 songs interspersed by instrumental tracks accompanying exceprts from Herman Hesse’s novel Gertrude.

As time passed, Klassen began working on another album, inspired greatly by the music of the Legendary Pink Dots and Skinny Puppy.  The track took on a more industrial form and then, due to a catastrophic hardware failure, all of the multritrack sources were lost.   The masters were compiled into 2005′s album Remnants of an Early Apocalypse, which was never really released. In the meantime, Cantor Dust had embarked on the dream-like journey of creating a primarily instrumental album, revolving around dark and fuzzy synths and the occasional vocal lines.  Swallowed By The Night became Cantor Dust’s first official full-length CD to be released.

Shortly after Swallowed By The Night was completed, Klassen began what turned into a short run of annually released instrumental albums, known as the Songs to Part Oceans By series, spanning from 2005 – 2008.  These albums explored more stream-of-consciousness in composition and were centred heavily around the piano, growing more fully orchestrated as years went by.

It was in 2006 that Cantor Dust played his first live performance. Inspired largely by The Residents, he chose to write a conceptual performance piece that depicted the horrors of overcoming dependence.  His performances brought him great amounts of joy, and he started writing a new performance album, The Contaminated Man.  After a year of performing this piece, the album was completed, and he was able to move on.

In 2007, Mark was joined by Kelly Ruth, and together they entered the journey of a new performance concept called Belladonna, in which two ex-lovers were reuinited over a cup of highly toxic tea.  Ruth and Klassen, fueled by the excitement of a joint musical endeavour, started on a one-shot performance for an evening of Day of the Dead cabaret, and wrote A Very Spooky Concept, which enjoyed both the vocal and trumpet stylings of Kelly.

2008 found Klassen inspired by a great strangeness that lead to the composition of The Three-Penised Man, recorded and performed with Kelly Ruth.

All the while, during the downtime of these performances, Klassen had been working behind the scenes on a new studio album consisting of, again, primarily instrumental tracks, akin to the feeling and sounds of Swallowed By The Night.  These tracks, written over the last few years, became compiled and released as Cultivating with Dr. Shush in 2008.

2009 found Klassen on a new level of exploration with symphonic composition, adding greatly to the depth and intricacy of Songs to Part Oceans By -Volume 4 and contributing to the full sound of his 2009 release, Blind Date, a story of a man dealing with the perils of an interplanetary relationship.

After Blind Date had been finished, Klassen began immediately writing new songs, specifically for performance and continued to compose as he performed for a year and half before being joined by percussionist Jeff Konwalchuk.  The two began composing new pieces as well as learning the contents of the album Safaris I’ve Been On.  Konwalchuk and Klassen played several shows together before their hunger for expansion introduced them to cellist Natanielle Felicitas and the return of Kelly Ruth.

The four-piece began testing the waters of acoustic performances as well as staging a CD Release party, Cantor Dust’s first, for April 8th, 2011.