DKA Records: Domestic Exile – Self-titled
Long time collaborators and friends Travis Thatcher and Chris Daresta met many years ago in the underbelly of Atlanta’s noise and experimental music scene. Chris fondly recalls someone saying “hey, you should meet this cool guy who likes drum machines as much as you.” Years later, Chris would go on to co-found DKA records, with Travis mastering many of the releases. The old friends went on to record a couple split cassettes with their solo projects Anticipation and Voice of Saturn, both released on DKA. During this time, a duo named Karger Traum from Oklahoma City sent in a demo to DKA. Their vocalist Taylor McKenzie and Chris immediately hit it off, with many long emails sent back and forth. Karger Traum would go on to release their first album on DKA, and Taylor founded the Oklahoma City dance label Fixed Rhythms. Life was good, bands went on tour, tapes and records flew out the door, and countless alcoholic beverages were spilled on the nation’s dance floors.
But then the pandemic hit. Stuck inside with the monotony of doing nothing, a new project begins to brew. Chris started sending tracks to Travis, who had moved to Charlottesville. Drum machines and synthesizers were dubbed out with echo, reverb, and onto lofi-tape machines. Six mercurial tracks emerged over time, but they needed something… But what? Thinking outside the box, Chris decided to reach out to Taylor to explore what vocals could bring to the music. After recording sessions with Nick Owen from Fixed Rhythms, the new project truly had come together. Taking its name from the influential and beloved cassette release “Domestic Exile” by Daniele Ciullini from 1983, the unworldly sounds of which seemed to so perfectly mirror the sound of the fledgling trio. With a name selected, the band Domestic Exile was now complete.
The music on Domestic Exile’s “self-titled” cassette is influenced by the already mentioned Daniele Ciullini of course, but one can easily hear industrial touchstones DAF and Liaisons Dangereuses, through the experimental filter of adventurous musicians like Drexciya, Cluster, Neu, and even the manic Void side of the Faith/Void lp. This is moody EBM dance music for those who like the darker, murkier, and obscure cassette releases of the eighties. Domestic Exile is a futurist soundtrack for the straggling and obstinate machines, still partying at the end of the world, despite the obvious.