“Drowning can also be a form of surrender,” read the notes on No Fire in the Sand, the latest release from Black Sea Dahu. “You choose to wade deeper into the water and, with this, you also allow the waves to consume you.” There might be little point in fighting the strong current, or else no reason to return to the shore. Either way, there’s a terrifying release in deep water, the temptation to stop kicking and relax. To submit to the overwhelming weight.
The recording project of Zurich’s Janine Cathrein, Black Sea Dahu makes an evocative brand of urban folk that manages to combine emotional rawness with a beguiling richness. No Fire in the Sand was produced and engineered by Gavin Gardiner of The Wooden Sky, a band who have perfected the raw/rich balance, and Gardiner’s fingerprints are evident in the vivid depth of the songs. However pretty and poignant the tracks might be at any given moment, they are subject to change in an instant, exploding with surprising intensity. Indeed, even the quieter tracks have a disarming undertow, dragging you into Cathrein’s emotional space, forcing you to surrender to the sound.
Opener ‘Rhizome’ shows off the record’s tidal nature, an ebb and flow in both the sound and lyrics. The bright and buoyancy belies the dark imagery of the track, that of black trees and dug holes, venom destroying whole packs of wolves. When the track does rise into something more dramatic, the lyrics flip to something more vulnerable and human, Cathrein’s pleading the end of a relationship with a mixture of guilt, angst and need.
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With its folk warmth, there’s a heartbroken fondness to ‘Thaw’ that soon swells into an elemental force, the desperate wishes of the vocals caught up in the rhythms of the track that act like hidden eddies in a black pool. The title track simmers with building momentum too, the guitar and drums threatening to race away but never quite following through, instead coalescing into an affirming crescendo that brings to life the idea of surrender to forces bigger than oneself.
So I’ll leave this place and soon see the waters
Run away from the sorrow in my mind
Give me those big waves I’ve always been scared of
I don’t hesitate anymore, more
I am ready now , I’m ready for you
There ain’t no fire in the sand to come back toLet them break now right over my head
Pull me out to sea
Clocking in at nearly double the length of other tracks, the mammoth ‘Demain’ has the patient volatility of the open ocean, moments of calm reflection escalating into tumultuous squall and dropping back again. “Now my voice fails and I’ve got a feverish head,” Cathrein sings, the anger and disbelief of a moribund relationship rearing its head. “And you drive me out / Out in the cold into a fuckin’ snowstorm / Have you lost your mind my dear?”
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For all of its crooned emotion, closer ‘How You Swallowed Your Anger’ is similarly turbulent. But far from utilising the same trick over and over, No Fire in the Sand feels nuanced and natural, the product of direct engagement with a relationship’s end. The waters are unstable and deep, layered into their own levels and ecosystems of infinite detail, yet at the end of it all, remarkably clear. For if one is to stop kicking and thrashing, to submit to the music, Black Sea Dahu will show you the truth at the bottom.
No Fire in the Sand is out now on Mouthwatering Records and available from the Black Sea Dahu Bandcamp page.
