Words by Justin Turford
The End Of The World ™ has been upon us for some time. Millennia to be precise. Artists, paranoiacs, cult and religious leaders, visionaries and scientists all have their theories and facts. You may have some yourself.
Regardless of when or if it will happen, I’ve always had a soft spot for music that sounds like civilisation on the edge, or just past it. I’m not sure if weirdo doom-dub provocateurs Damos Room have an opinion on our possible extinction but musically, they offer an entertaining soundtrack to the inevitable sight of dandelions cracking through The Shard’s steel and glass rubble.
Self-described as ‘Reasonably priced and readily available, Damos Room are an international equestrian investment consortium (not a pyramid scheme) founded by the Horse Militia. Available for immediate viewings, listenings and general chit chat (specifically in the Bracknell Forest area)’, the naughty trio piled into the studio of Breadminster County Council’s Elijah Minnelli and made this two-tracker of ‘dub-adjacent’ poetic eccentricity, inviting some choice remixers for the release which came out on Nudibranch late last month.
Damos Room in Red Phone Pic
Groaning whirs and evil clockwork sounds are the propulsion behind the broken dub of ‘Commencement’, the horror humour of the lyrics delivered with deadpan boredom - “the piggies have gone to market, the hogs have wandered off”. Like a soundsystem cousin of The Caretaker, it’s an uncomfortable ride unless the darkness is where you laugh the hardest. It’s ace.
Los Angeles’ free jazz, hip hop brutalist Gonjasufi jumps on the remix duties with his usual psychedelic mangling. Untuned guitars, filtered drum machine and lysergic waves of stressed echoes terrorise the original track, the vocal barely audible as he breaks the code.
Lewi Boome’s remix of ‘Commencement’ brings out different monsters to play, its synthetic fuzz grating the fillings but allowing the vocal to sit central as the double speed percussion adds zing. It’s still pretty bloody weird.
‘Mineral Blend’ is digital dancehall if it had grown up in the circus. The bouncing sub bassline tries to keep it straight but the mushroom banquet seems to have spooked the guests. Catchy and strange on equal terms, I might drop this at Houghton Festival just to frighten the birds.
Dome Zero blends the minerals with scattershot snares and hats and a sub-industrial kick pattern that bears no further resemblance to dub until the bassline appears with distortion and bite.
The package is wrapped up with Polyop’s pitched down tech-dub rework of ‘Mineral Blend’. Groggy but held up by clean and pretty synth stabs, it’s a cavernous head nodder that hits the squidge button at just the right moment.
As much art as music, Damos Room sit in their own space. Funny and fearful, their swaggering mash up of the right and wrong is just what this world deserves. 85p/£1.00
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