DARVID THOR RELEASES A SURREAL AND CINEMATIC LYNCHIAN FILM CLIP FOR “BE THERE / ANEMOIA”
Today, DARVID THOR announces his debut album, In The Space You Carry, out August 2nd on Beloved Recordings, and presents a double single/video, “Be There / Anemoia”. Garnering support from Beach Fossils and Danger Mouse around his “absorbing, photosynthetic, warped, beautiful” (Triple J) 2019 debut, Darvid’s gentle and tender indie rock reminds us to slow down, take a breath, and take stock of what’s around us.
In “BeThere”, DarvidThor asks listeners to imagine the liminal spaces his unreconciled selves occupy. The indie idiom falters as Darvid unseals his envelope of sound, introducing disturbing vocal cadences and edgier, orchestral arrangements to his repertoire. Perfectly accompanied by a surreal, almost Lynchian/Maya Deren-like film clip, director BridgetteWinten takes us on a wild trip into Darvid’s mind, exploring reconciling anxieties and a shedding of skin. Filmed on 16mm Kodak Film, Bridgette Winten, and DOP TomDunphy manage to capture chaos and catharsis across this double video feature.
It’s a signature opening, Hudson Whitlock stirring drums with highs that teeter across the listeners’ lips. At the same time, Bassist and co-producer Lewis Coleman, as if hardwired to Darvid’s temporal lobe, intuits every tilt and falter in his voice, like adding an extra adjective to each of his stanzas. Accentuated by cushioned, crystalline Clavinet and percussion, the atmosphere percolates, arriving at a bridge that frames Darvid’s two selves and the strange dichotomy between them; the mature and the vulnerable.
Strings emerge under a dusty-sounding Mellotron feature, surging the song forward into a tempestuous jam as guitars ricochet off the walls of Darvid’s memory palace, splashing across a brackish and unsettling medley of instrumentation. It’s music that unmoors the listener until his voice re-emerges, scathed from the reckoning, but alive and breathing, just.
The scant breath concluding Be There and opening Anemonia is uttered like Darvid’s last. The Penny String Quartet drags him across harsh, tessellated surfaces, toward the final frontiers of his unfurnished mood. Paradoxically, it is Darvid’s absence musically from this arrangement that authenticates the ethos of In The Space You Carry; to shed oneself. He may not be playing, but Darvid’s intent is buried deep within this collaboration.
For one and a half minutes, his identity is placed upon an open slather, untethered and genderless as the quartets’ cellos and violins infiltrate the gravity around him, creating a very real affectation toward the song’s literal definition; nostalgia for a place no one has ever known.
Whilst containing the right amount of angst so as to not forget the song’s indie pedigree, its caliber, and emotional depth reflect the Quartet’s renown within this continent’s chamber music scene and the talent of Nick Roder at arranging pieces that develop narrative quickly without sounding rushed. A piece this visceral and honest is something that can’t just be heard, but listened to and actively engaged with. It motivates you to lie down with Darvid for a moment and consider what hasn’t been.
Darvid Thor’s solo project is one side of his prolific output as an artist, label founder, and collaborator. Growing up with a tight-knit group of musicians that formed The Cactus Channel in 2008, Darvid and his cohort built and developed a unique sound, process, and community, collectively contributing to over 50 releases since 2011. This family has grown to include beloved cinematic-soul group Karate Boogaloo, enigmatic art-rocker Lewis Coleman, the dreamy Winten, and the mysterious Pro-Teens. At the heart of his practice lies the establishment of Beloved Recordings (Rowena Wise, Lewis Coleman), an indie record label championing lyrically captivating and musically daring art-rock, indie-folk, and weirdo-pop. Finally, there’s Frollen Music Library, founded by Darvid and fellow Karate Boogaloo members to create analog soul and library music for producers, who recently placed a sample in ScHoolboy Q’s latest record, “Blue Lips”.
