Video Premiere: Darsombra ‘Gibbet Lore’ – From New Double Album ‘Dumesday Book’
How would you describe a band like Darsombra? Psych, kraut, prog, post-rock, post-metal, doom, drone or even good old rock and roll? Maybe it’s all of them, or even none of them as it’s down to your own senseless interpretation as to the sonics this eclectic, and genre-defying, duo unleash to the unsuspecting masses.
And today, it’s The Shaman’s absolute honour to bring you the surreal video, the result of a call to arms on social evil, for the awesome new track Gibbet Lore that’s taken from their latest double album, Dumesday Book which releases on the 25th August through their own imprint Pnictogen Records.
About the track, guitarist extraordinaire Brian Daniloski says, ‘As is often the case with our songs, we are surprised with what the muse brought us with Gibbet Lore. The intro and main guitar riff/loop were something that just popped into my head one day in an instant. I sang it into my phone to save for posterity and further deliberation.’
He then adds, ‘It turns out it was in F, a key I almost never play in. The majority of the song was composed around the guitar loop, with vocals and keys based upon the ideas the loop inspired in us – not to mention the surprise of discovering it was the right thing to mix audio clips of a prank call I recorded when I was an adolescent and geothermal vents (a.k.a. ‘mudpots’) by the Salton Sea into the stew of the song.’
While on the video, synth and percussion protagonist Ann Everton comments, ‘Again, the muse’s connections were obscure when it came time to compose the video – a wolf howling on top of a mountain became a dog howling on a hill, the ominous toll of a slowed-down hand bell called for the lonely turning of a wagon wheel deep in a desolate forest (‘bring out your dead’, indeed), and the plague-stricken dancers in loosely-interpreted Ren Fest garb…? Although this work comes from the unique visions of camp Darsombra, we really are just listening to the muse and following her lead, whether we like it or not!’
Now click play below to embrace the whacky world of Darsombra with Gibbet Lore…
More On Darsombra & Dumesday Book
Darsombra is a cinematic conceptual rock band uniting composer Brian Daniloski on guitar, bass, vocals, and sound design, and filmmaker Ann Everton on synth, vocals, percussion, and projections. The band is internationally known for walking the line between glam-prog-psych-stoner metal and site-specific installation performance art. Live, their carefully crafted songs and videos create a hallucinogenic synesthesia for the audience, as Everton and Daniloski build a temporary reality from sound, sight, and movement.
Prolifically touring for well over a decade, Darsombra has performed in forty-eight states and twenty countries throughout North America, Asia, and Europe, at music venues, festivals, DIY spaces, house shows, galleries, city ruins, dive bars, cultural centers, record stores, coffee shops, and parks, not to mention their legendary pop-up generator shows at national monuments and forests, or just by the side of the road. No matter where they perform, the most common responses a Darsombra show elicits are, ‘I didn’t know what to expect, but that was awesome,’ ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and ‘It was like an acid trip, but without the acid.’
Following releases on At A Loss Recordings, Public Guilt, Exile On Mainstream, Translation Loss, Dogma Artistic Guerrilla, and Noise Bombing, Darsombra self-released their last full-length album, Transmission, in 2019. Since then, they’ve also self-released a cassette single, 2022’s Call The Doctor/Nightgarden EP, while preparing for the release of their massive Dumesday Book double LP.
Deliverinh seventy-five minutes of sonic revelry, to delight and confound both seasoned Darsombra listeners and unwitting new ears alike. The album was recorded and mixed by Brian Daniloski at the band’s home studio, Whale Manor, and mastered by Jon Smulyan, while Ann Everton handled the cover art, photography, and videography. The record includes a twelve-page booklet illustrating each track, and all physical formats also include a sticker exclusive to the work and a Bandcamp download code with access to additional bonus material. Besides the standard 2xLP and CD versions, the album will also be available in a number of limited bundle packages, which include a handmade bismuth crystal and/or limited-edition t-shirt.
Originally conceived as a surreal take on a pop album to contrast with their ominously prescient monolithic 2019 release, Transmission, Dumesday Book is a ten-song survey of sentiment and human experience in the pandemic, from initial lockdown to vaccinated re-emergence and beyond – which, in the Darsombra microcosm, means from cancelled tours to returning to the road.
Fittingly, Darsombra’s Brian Daniloski and Ann Everton wrote the framework for the album during the quarantine of Spring 2020, and then tirelessly refined it over the next three years. At times bizarre, intense, mollifying, sardonic, irreverent, overwhelming, and hopeful, Dumesday Book takes its name from the 11th century census book which served as the oldest public record in the English language, Domesday Book – so named because its decisions were unalterable, its sentence was law, and its survey of human activity so complete.
The album’s sound follows the theme of survey as well, with glam-prog frivolity giving way to heavy psych doomscapes laden with music concrète field recordings. A bong rip takes you from a disconcerting chord progression to a goblin doggerel dirge, all to resolve into a space-shimmery synthcapade laced with heart-fueled guitar riffs worthy of any Krautrockian nod for a non-Teutonic band. Of course, there are serious moments of rock woven throughout this hour-plus-long musical journey, but to typify Dumesday Book as simply drone, or metal, or psych – or even prog – is missing the point.
Having just returned from several weeks of touring around the Great Lakes, Darsombra announces their next venture – a massive run of North American tour dates for the Summer and Fall months – supporting the August release of their long-awaited new album, Dumesday Book. With shows confirmed from August through October, Darsombra’s Dumesday Book Tour leads off with their performance at the off-the-grid Voice Of The Valley Festival in Fairview, West Virginia on August 5th.
Then on August 25th, the day Dumesday Book sees release, the band will set out across the country once again, leading with a hometown record release show. The tour will come to a finale at the Shadow Woods Reunion in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania with Panopticon and more. See the current itinerary below and stand by as the band continues to book new excursions into the Fall and Winter months. For the latest Darsombra gig dates, head over to their website.
Dumesday Book Tracklist:
01. Shelter In Place
02. Call The Doctor (Pandemonium Mix)
03. Plague Times
04. Everything Is Canceled
05. Nightgarden (Profundo Mix)
06. Azimuth
07. Still Canceled
08. A New Dell
09. Gibbet Lore
10. Mellow Knees
Darsombra is:
Brian Daniloski – Guitar, Bass, Vocals, Sound Design
Ann Everton – Synth, Vocals, Percussion, Projections
Dumesday Book, the new album from the eclectic and genre-defying duo Darsombra, releases on 25th August through their own Pnictogen Records and is available to pre-order now over on Bandcamp.
Label: Pnictogen Records
Band Links: Official | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram
