Darsombra drone in Metro Gallery’s first show of 2013

Baltimore’s audio/visual mind-benders Darsombra perform Friday, Jan. 4 at Metro Gallery with the unpredictable duo Jucifer of Athens, Ga. and heavy hitting thrashers, Radical Discharge. Darsombra recently completed a quick European tour with Stinking Lizaveta and launched a new album Climax Community. If your New Year’s resolutions included expanding your mind, then tuning in and dropping out at this show would be a great way to start.

Darsombra

I listed Climax Community among my top albums of 2012, and for good reason. Guitarist Brian Daniloski uses multiple guitars and effects pedals to transport listeners to another auditory realm. His partner Ann Everton pairs his sounds with visual experiences that will make psycho-active chemicals seem quite unnecessary.  Released in October 2012, Climax Community is Darsombra’s first on the German label Exile On Mainstream. You can listen to a full stream of the recording at this link on Decibel Magazine.

Brian and Ann were willing to answer some of my inane questions. Their answers follow.

How did you come up with your specific sound? 
Brian: My sound was developed over a long time, by playing guitar and experimenting with effects pedals. Especially around the beginning of the century, I was trying to make one lone instrument sound like a whole band, or even an orchestra, and things just evolved from there. I was really inspired by the Thrones, Robert Fripp, and KK Null, at the time.

Why do you like to incorporate visuals into your show?
Brian: I’ve always enjoyed incorporating visuals into the live shows of the bands I’ve been in (Meatjack, and before that, Stranger Than Fiction), but with Darsombra, we’re taking it to the next level.
Ann: What that means is that we’re working with a sense of synergy. We’re finding ourselves in a symbiotic relationship–Brian makes the music, and then I make the videos in response to the music, and then he plays the music back in time with the videos–keeping time with them sort of the way a band keeps time with a drummer.

What was the European tour like? What were some highlights? 
Brian: The tour was a blast–it’s always fun to travel, see new places, make new friends, and catch up with old ones.
Ann: Also, it’s fun to examine the difference between Europe and America–it makes us realize things we want to change about how we live (i.e. no one has a clothes dryer, people bike a lot more than us for transportation, cars are smaller, toilet paper is smaller, people live smaller), but also appreciate things here at home (i.e. the multiculturalism that is inherent to America, despite our weird and often fucked-up history).
Brian: There were lots of highlights on that tour. I remember in particular being woken up in our hotel room in Stolzenhain, Germany, to the sound of The Obsessed rehearsing “The Way She Fly”–from all the way on the other side of the village, about a mile away, where the South of Mainstream festival was held.
Ann: I really loved our time in Luzern, Switzerland. After the show, the promoter fed us homemade chestnut parfait, and then we took a 3 a.m. visit to the neighboring barn to feed the cows. . . and then we went on a walk on the Wanderweg (a Swiss national hiking trail) behind the venue in the moonlight!

What was your goal in selecting the music for Climax Community?
Brian: I wanted the music to document and reflect where I am right now as a musician, and I wanted the album to be epic and expansive. This time around I’ve incorporated acoustic guitar and more vocals than previous efforts. Climax Community is a completely composed album, whereas our previous release in 2012, Mega-Void, was entirely improvised. I wanted to present two sides of Darsombra’s sound.

What’s coming up for Darsombra in 2013?
Ann: We’ve scheduled a tour in February, down to Austin and back to promote the new album. Also, we’ve possibly got another European tour in fall, and we’d like to start contacting people in Japan. We just moved to a new house with new studios so hopefully new music and videos will be coming forth in 2013, and, if there’s time, we’d like to get a quick tour in, before the end of the year on the moon.

Tickets to Friday’s Metro Gallery show are $8 on MissionTix.

Check out this video below. Winter tour dates after the jump.