rikm
An excellent collaboration between members of Parade and Mean Red Spiders, blending synths and guitar work in a hauntingly beautiful exploration of retro-futurist musical ideas. Really excellent work, highly recommended.
It started with a glimmer, an echo, a slowly emerging pattern forming in uncharted horizons. Sonic explorers Rob Boak and David S. Faris began their journey into undefined territory in early 2017, mapping out new forms in the celestial sphere. Dark Constellations originated through a series of recording sessions at Boak’s Studio 115, which unfolded in unexpected ways, resulting in an initial set of tracks that begin to define the duo’s sound. With an open-ended approach towards writing and instrumentation, both musicians took an intuitive, improvised approach in the studio, drawing from their own considerable experience in a variety of different bands and recording projects over the past 25+ years. Rob Boak (Interstellar, Mean Red Spiders, Cinemascope) brings his signature processed guitar sound, keyboard drones, and production skills to the project, while David S. Faris (Parade, Digital Poodle, Atonement) contributes atmospheric electronic sounds, keyboard melodies, manipulated beat loops, and guitar textures. With an assortment of synthesizers, guitars, drum machines, and effects, Dark Constellations recorded the songs that would become its first EP over a six month period in 2017. The group’s material incorporates aspects of ambient, drone, abrasive sounds, hazy guitar tones, and disorienting loops, drawing inspiration from electronic music pioneers, post-punk agitators, shoegaze and lo-fi indie artists from the late ’80s and ’90s post-rock era, and a wide range of other sources. The resulting EP, “For Tomorrow”, captures this initial set of recordings, evocative and cinematic in approach, shifting from ominous, ghostly sounds to flickering, dream-like impressions, to layered and distorted guitars, with an undercurrent of loops, drones, and minimal beats. This is the first transmission from Dark Constellations.... future constellations are still being discovered.
Dark Constellations joined the Toronto-based paper+sound label in 2018, and its debut EP “For Tomorrow” is released in June, 2018. The EP is comprised of five songs, and a remix of the track “Distant Outpost” by paper+sound artists Heiki Sillaste and Kris Helström, both 30+ year veterans of the Canadian electronic music scene and groups such as Digital Poodle, Kinder Atom, Laser Caps and Hozerz. “For Tomorrow” opens with “Secret Cinema”, the first track that Dark Constellations put to tape in March, 2017, layering a moody, swirling haze of unsettling sounds and distant waves of static over pulsating drum machine rhythms, driven by a sinister guitar line. “Distant Outpost” follows, an echoing vortex of foreboding electronic drones, piano, raw-edged guitar lines, and impressionistic beats, reconstructed and reworked as “Remix 6” to close out the EP. “Final Transmission” is a nocturnal soundscape, with an ebb and flow of spectral sounds and spare guitar melodies slowly unfolding with the unsettling quality of a half-remembered dream. Minimal drone “You Through Electronics” delves into experimental electronic terrain, layering strobing and sweeping tones in a kaleidoscopic, freeform piece. Title track “For Tomorrow” is the final song on the EP, a dense guitar-driven track that is by turns blissful, introspective, and haunting, looking towards the horizon as the daylight fades and vivid colours accentuate the skyline.
credits
released July 1, 2018
All music written & produced by Rob Boak & David S. Faris
Recorded at Studio 115, Toronto, March–September 2017
Mastered by Heiki Sillaste at Wright Sounds, May 2018
Remix by Heiki Sillaste & Kris Helström
Cover photo collage by Rob Boak
Design by David S. Faris
www.paperplusound.com
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