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.
Cassette / Digital Album
Towards the beginning of 2023, we at DKA heard rumblings of a new cold-wave inspired acid performer/producer fogging up Atlanta’s stages. We were excited to learn that it was our friend Peter Roglin, aka Charolastra. Now working under the Fugitive Artifact moniker, DKA is thrilled to present his debut album, “Deferentiator.” Painted with bleak, textured, dystopian backdrops and dark cryptic lyrics, fugitive artifact is a unique exploration of dance music drawing on a breadth of influences from Chicago House, techno, electro, dark pop, and cold-wave.
Designed to be a vehicle to explore his darker, colder side, he wanted to do away with the laptop as much as possible, relying solely on drum machines and synthesizers. For Roglin, this project is about relinquishing control and embracing the ephemeral impermanence of musical ideas.
The theme of relinquishing control is at the centerpiece of Deferentiator in both approach and subject matter. Fitting right at home with local DKA acts TWINS and CRT, the now NYC-based Fugitive Artifact has imagined a sound reminiscent of Suicide and Drexciya combined with a strong appreciation of the cinematic film scores of David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Cliff Martinez.
Cassette / Digital Album
Toward the end of 2022, always with a finger on the drum-machine pulse of the EBM underground, the DKA collective heard rumors of a new artist crushing dance floors. A mysterious gentleman from Detroit, Michigan was blowing minds and turning heads with a series of singles filled to the brim with heavy sludge and mutoid funk. DKA was soon tasked with finding the man behind Comfort Cure and has now arranged to release Design International on cassette in 2023. Design International builds on the strengths of his previous releases but finds Tyler Baker/Comfort Cure sharpening his hooks and polishing his production for crystal clear destruction of the dance floor.
The A-side features four new tracks of futuristic body music. While four remixes make up the B-side, finding DKA’s own Semantix on remix duty alongside Ye Gods/Antoni Maiovvi and Broodfaye. Make sure you add this one to your collection because we have a feeling it’s going to sell fast!
Cassette / Digital Album
DKA is starting 2023 off with an EBM bang with Violent Protocol by Semantix. The solo-project of Keaton Khonsari (Razorbumps, Narrow Head), Semantix is the result of years in the Texas underground that Khonsari spent learning synthesis and production.
Violent Protocol contains 5 originals and three remixes from DKA alumni Balvanera and Autumns along with Orlando’s Mother Juno. Violent Protocol’s catchy, rhythmic basslines, tense atmosphere, and old-school EBM samples confronting despair, violence, and power structures will surely appeal to long time followers of DKA and new fans alike. We here at DKA loved Semantix’s first release Mania in the Psychosphere and feel that this sophomore release will place Semantix amongst EBM’s elite dance floor destructors in 2023.
Cassette / Digital Album
DKA is elated to welcome TWINS & Rom, two of the Atlantic Seaboard’s most mysterious, prolific and quietly lauded legends of uniquely challenging music. CH Rom is the impish conductor responsible for a content universe under his primary handle as well as among myriad collaborations such as Pump Media Unlimited, Spam, Wharp & Rom, Crustacean Committee, and of course his decades-long co-venture with TWINS, covering everything from 22nd century dance music to noir detective funk. The magnetic and majestic TWINS needs no introduction here at DKA, a member of the family and 15 illustrious years in as the man, body, and spirit behind TWINS, and a key member of other celebrated collaborative projects including the industrial bang and bash of Pyramid Club, with Chris Daresta, and the mutant new-new beat of Free Range with Ernestas Sadau.
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