Dark Entires is excited to introduce the debut album “Less Ness” from contemporary Bay Area duo, Max and Mara. Their collaboration began in 2012. Max is based in Oakland and has been a part of various projects most notably Brotman and Short and his current solo work as Business Etiquette. Mara is based in San Francisco and is known for her solo work as Group Rhoda.
On “Less Ness” they worked with a hardware set up: 808 and Elektron drum machine, Moog, MAM, and Sequential Circuits synth with splashes of Mono/Poly and collage elements, vocoder lines and dubbed out vocals. They step away from the the computer as much as possible and prefer that their ideas can be traced back to the tools so that a sense of physicality remains. They find inspiration from all kinds of far out sounds, most notably dub, industrial, and various drug culture tangents. Lyrically the songs revolve around topics such as escapism, looking though cultural windows, and character role development. Some songs are a bit more surrealist in content with elements of hard realism and critical commentary. All songs have been mastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Each LP is housed in a jacket featuring a painting by Shana Why. Prepare to turn your gaze to the things in front of you and away from screen generated culture and its mimicry of social participation.
LP / Digital Album
Dark Entries is proud to present the debut album by Figure Study, a contemporary band from New York. Figure Study is the Manhattan duo of Nathan Antolik and April Chalpara, who share writing and production duties, while April handles the vocals. They began the project in 2009, after meeting one another through the Wierd Records weekly party, where they would play their first concert soon after.
For their debut self-titled album Figure Study utilize a small, simple analog synthesizer set up of all vintage Roland analog synths and drum machine. April’s elegant vocals glide through the hazy shadows of a distant, emotionless world. Songs flux between pulsating and saturnine. Figure Study’s sound includes influences from underground new wave music such as Kirlian Camera, Nine Circles, and The Actor.
7″ / Digital Album
Dark Entries is proud to release the third EP “Commerce” from San Francisco based INHALT, German for “content”.
“Commerce” closes the bands anti neo-liberalism trilogy that started with “Vehicle” and left off with the surveillance-themed “Occupations”. The course du jour is a close examination of the self destructive tendency of the ego in relation to the allure of negativity and mass tragedy. This, in tandem with the sociopolitical reinforcement of identity as a commercial product, and psychological insanity as status quo, laid the groundwork for the songwriting.
The EP details the psychopathy of relentless thirst mandated by neo-liberalism and traverses through to the adoption of social and economic technologies that strengthen domination vis a vis self enslavement to disempowerment. There are no answers, only descriptors and mantras until the void of wholeness is reached out of complete solitude. The machine has stopped long enough to witness its own destruction in the wake of the rise of consciousness.
The record was produced over four years at the bands own Black Sun Loft recording studio and Different Fur Studios. Paul Lavigne mastered the EP in London, England at Kontrast Mastering and George Horn handled the vinyl EQ curve at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley. Each download includes front and back cover art as well as the complete translated lyric sheet designed by Leo Merz.
Digital Album
De-Bons-en-Pierre is a project from Beau Wanzer & Maoupa Mazzocchetti. Beau Wanzer spends the majority of his days sifting through paraffin embedded animal tissues and reading old issues of Fangoria, occasionally breaking his monotonous routine to record in various fits and bursts. As well as solo material, he is also in numerous projects including Streetwalker, Mutant Beat Dance, Civil Duty, and Corporate Park. He’s released on many labels including; Diagonal, L.I.E.S, Cititrax, Nation, Rush Hour, and Light Sounds Dark. Maoupa Mazzocchetti is the pseudonym of Florent Mazzocchetti, a French producer based in Brussels. Florent is strictly devoted to a DIY mentality around music production and his sound revives the electro-industrial aesthetic of the late 70s and early 80s. He’s released notable productions on labels such as Unknown Precept, PRR! PRR!, Knekelhuis and Mannequin Records.
While Beau was visiting Brussels he stopped by Maoupa’s house to jam for a bit. All songs were recorded on April 4, 2016 between 11:00am and 11:00pm, as single live takes.“Crepes” is a 6-track EP, titled so because they ate crepes the majority of the session. Beau says, “There was a bit of a language barrier. We’d mostly just laugh and nod when something sounded cool to us.” The equipment set up included a Roland TR-808, TR-606, SH-101, CR-78, CR-8000, two Syncussions and effects. Over 23 minutes of garbles, sludgy synths and leviathan rhythms. Surfing the slippery slope between industrial and electro, but never quite falling in, just a dip of your pinky toe to to test the temperature.
LP / Digital Album
Dark Entries is proud to release the debut album from Bézier titled ‘Parler Musique’. Bézier is Taiwanese-American musician Robert Yang who is also part of the Honey Soundsystem crew. A multi-instrumentalist, Robert grew up in Southern California then planted his roots in San Francisco in 2005. Over the years in SF he has built an impressive analog synth-based studio, which also serves as the creative hub for his riveting live performances.
Parler Musique clocks in at over 52 minutes with 8 tracks are spread across four sides for maximum loudness. The album title is a French transliteration on the phrase “Parlor Music” and is evening music for a meeting of minds in a drawing room or a literary salon. To ‘talk about music’, the actual translation of the title, the album is a hotbed of ideas. Different genres are crisscrossed: punk, synthpop, jungle, new romantic, industrial and new wave. Airy melodies, surging arpeggios and symphonic breakdowns counterpoint cold digital drum sounds to convey beauty within inescapable and impending daily processes. The track titles for ‘Parler Musique’ zoom in on Romantic preoccupations with mystery, unknowns, depths–where themes combine to form an occult revelatory experience.
LP / Digital Album
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