Doomking is a new synth-based project about “about being trapped by ones surroundings and spending too many late nights stuck in the internet”, which I’m sure is all too relevant for many of us. The sense of being stuck, both physically and mentally, runs through the record, clear thoughts and actions enveloped by a vague inertia and confusion. The general atmosphere is summed up by a quote on the Bandcamp page:

“I was out walking on the first hot night of the year. I was heading in the general direction of my old friends’ house, who I hadn’t seen in a while. My friend moved away last year. Realizing this I start to head back home. It’s 2 am, my friend would have been sleeping anyway.”

In a way similar to the Island Eyes record, A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence paints the familiar in a grand mythic way, late-night fever-thoughts turned fractured poetry. The desperation here is underlying yet abundantly clear, as if pushed backwards by the superficial stimulation of technology and the dull passing of time, long days turned short by the contemporary narcotic routine of information consumption.

Opener ‘Fernwood Detachment’ serves as a perfect example, the odd imagery and ambiguous visions swathed in expansive synths. The narrator is cast as alone, separated from the other character (a nameless ‘you’) by time and space. “I want to see the ocean,” he sings, lonely. “Without feeling like I don’t / Have anyone around”. ‘Ruin’ is similarly solitary, playing like the soundtrack to a walk through an abandoned town.

“Oh man, I don’t know
What to make of these dreams
I thought I saw
Something come to light
As though transfixed by these projections
And the path was open wide”

‘The Infinite Eye of Mount Douglas, I See My Love’ brings to mind Concatentating Fields by Trouble Books, its simmering synths feeling simple yet strangely organic, like some prehistoric sea. Dreamier still is ‘Home of the Ray Lake Dancers’, Soles’s vocals weaving in and out of finger-clicking percussion and synths which ebb and flow like a tide:

“Reading old emails
To get through the winter
Dragging my body
Behind you, behind you
I will stay inside
This empty room
I know it well
I saw a dancer
Waiting for summer
I saw a dancer
Waiting for summer”

‘Old House’ swells gently like a sunrise, like a city at night, before the vocals enter quiet yet prominent. “This, this is the house,” Soles sings, “where I plan to die”. The words are sung without fear, as if voiced from the clutches of an ever-deepening dormancy that numbs both mind and body. The end of the track sounds like a surrendering to this sensation, and album closer ‘Mark of Something’ is a 13-minute continuation, a float through a foreign landscape gently warped and obscured, the first footsteps into the final dream.

With its mixture of impassioned sentiments and general despondency shrouded in a haze of confusion, this is a release very much of and for our times: Where technological connectivity is driving, paradoxically, isolation and detachment, where words and videos from faraway places are piped into our silent twilit bedrooms like prescribed dreams.

You can buy A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence now from the Doomking Bandcamp page, including the novel and rather lovely picture frame/digital download format.

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This self-titled release is Island Eyes’ first album, and fans of Janzen’s previous work will be pleased to find that he is still crafting exciting, experimental pop/rock music that incorporates a range of instruments and electronics. An obvious comparison is Spencer Krug’s Moonface output, especially earlier releases like Organ Music and Heartbreaking Bravery, although both acts are distinctive and unusual and probably share less in common than the majority of conventional bands.

The artwork goes some way to describing the themes and atmosphere on offer on Island Eyes, a mystical blend of nature and obscure, mythological imagery packed onto an island surrounded by sea. The narrative across the album has the feel of a classic quest – a pursuit of love, noble or otherwise, which begins on the very opening track:

“There’s a wind in my heart
There’s a sword in the air, on the ocean
I lay down, waiting for someone to love”

The entire album could be interpreted from this perspective, an epic captured in the protagonist’s poetic words or thoughts as he’s propelled across land and life by the voice and hands of his love (“As the morning sun wakes the sleeping wolves / I’ll be in your room; I’ll be in your home” continues ‘Pale Moon’). However, the odyssey is not a Hollywood movie with heroic deeds and happy endings. Instead it’s littered with confusion and menace, ominous imagery invoking random violence of nature and other forces, clear narrative replaced by the intuitive jumble of a dream. ‘Every House Is On Fire’ opens with a drum machine reminiscent of Handsome Furs and dives straight into the aforementioned unsettling imagery:

“I heard your voice inside the room
As all your storming clouds came in for you
I called your name, I called on high
But everybody’s houses are on fire

I won’t run, I won’t hide
In the dark of the night
Now I know, you were right
I’ll remain in the light of the sun”

If the first half of the album channelled a weird fantasy world then the second becomes dreamier still, as titles such as ‘You Had a Dream About Love’ and ‘October Mirage’ suggest. The latter again returns to the imagery of islands and swords, all shrouded in an oneiric fog like some fever dream of a would-be hero:

“To dream of the sea
Where I’m washed to the shore
With the clouds coming in
Like the waters before
I lift up my voice
To the ruinous waves
For the lights that once shone
Are beginning to fade”

The strange thing is that as things get weirder, you get the impression that the album is not really an epic at all. Or rather, it is an epic metaphor, an extended attempt to convey the modern-day feelings of the narrator through grand, legendary means. And the narrator could very well be Janzen himself – maybe the island in question Vancouver Island, the sea the Pacific ocean or the Strait of Georgia? What once seemed an interesting and magical tale becomes something more meaningful and unsettling: ‘Throw My Ashes Off the Pier’ deals with the admittedly morbid yet very real/common musings on how you want your loved ones to continue after your death (“O will you wait for me after I disappear? Or will you throw, will you throw all my ashes off of this pier, O my dear?”), while ‘Over Waves’ ends the release on an uncomfortable but cathartic note. “O I’m afraid of this heart,” Janzen sings, the track relatively bare in comparison to the electronic layers of the others, “I’m afraid of your ghost, I’m afraid of your love”. Here he confronts the uncertainty of every life, admitting his fear about pretty much every possible scenario while finding solace in the fact that this uncertainty binds us all.

Whether you want to listen to a fantasy, or a reality that can only be conveyed through the fantastic, this album will not disappoint. Island Eyes is out now via Legwarmer Records. You can grab a rather fetching cassette (see below) from the Island Eyes Bandcamp page.

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Walha is what Wolf Parade would sound like if they traded in their punk influences and played around campfires. There is the rhythmic drumming and the ominous dual vocals and ‘ohhs’ and ‘laas’ of Krug et al., but there is also guitar strumming and piano tinkling and all sorts of clicks and rattles that invoke thoughts of wild spirits wandering ancient spaces.

The experimental flavour isn’t just restricted to the sounds, with the lyrics exploring some pretty weird themes. Soles says the songs are about ‘beach spirits, lakes, the ocean, water and stuff, lethargy, aching bodies, memory, myths, real lives, war, visions, and delusions.’ The lyrics, which are available to read in full on Bandcamp (something i always like), are poetic and dark and encourage not only repeated listens but further reading. Do you know who Bucephalus was? Or what Atrophos is? Neither did I.

You can buy Walha on Bandcamp now on a limited edition CD.

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Tracklisting:

1. Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas Cover) – Gwar^
2. Rebellion (Lies) (Arcade Fire Cover) – Trampled By Turtles^
3. Hickory (Iron & Wine Cover) – Pilots & Errors
4. Candy O (The Cars Cover) – Richard Buckner
5. No Diggity (Backstreet Cover) – Chet Faker
6. All Hell For a Basement (Big Sugar Cover) – Jordan Soles
7. Locked In (Wesley Wolfe Cover) – Schooner
8. Hollywood Forever Cemetry Sings (Father John Misty Cover) – Tashaki Miyaki
9. Motor Away (Guided By Voices Cover) – Bill Times a Billion
10. Kid’s Allright (Bettie Serveert Cover) – Three Blind Wolves
11. (What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace Love and Understanding (Brinsley Schwartz Cover) – Shovels & Rope
12. Red Comet Dust (Jason Molina Cover) – CFCF
13. I Would Not Die in the Springtime (Stephen Foster Cover) – Field Report
14. On of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen Cover) – Father John Misty
15. True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston Cover) – Isaac Delusion
16. Entertainment (Phoenix Cover) – Dinosaur Jr.
17. Hey Tonight (Free Energy Cover) – Patrick Stickles
18. Los Angeles, I’m Yours (The Decemberists Cover) – Mariachi El Bronx
19. Days of Heaven (Randy Newman Cover) – Phosphorescent
20. Everything Trying (Damien Jurado Cover) – Night Beds*
21. I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher Cover) – Mark Kozelek

* – Taken from the Night Beds Chapel Session by Fuel Friends
^ – Taken from the A.V. Undercover series.

This mix is intended as a way of giving artists some publicity. Please have a closer look at the bands you enjoy, then maybe go to a show and buy their records. They probably have families to feed too.

The Covers Mix: Volume #7 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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