Dumesday Book Album Nears August Release Alongside Extensive North American Tour
photo by Julia Vering
“…it’s down to your own senseless interpretation as to the sonics this eclectic, and genre-defying, duo unleash to the unsuspecting masses.” – The Sleeping Shaman
As Baltimore, Maryland-based psychedelic post-rock duo DARSOMBRA prepares to release their immersive Dumesday Book album in August, The Sleeping Shaman is hosting the premiere of the band’s new “Gibbet Lore” video.
Dumesday Book delivers seventy-five minutes of sonic revelry, to delight and confound both seasoned DARSOMBRA listeners and unwitting new ears alike. The album was recorded and mixed by Brian Daniloski at the band’s home studio, Whale Manor, and mastered by Jon Smulyan, while Ann Everton handled the cover art, photography, and videography. The record includes a twelve-page booklet illustrating each track, and all physical formats also include a sticker exclusive to the work and a Bandcamp download code with access to additional bonus material.
The penultimate song from Dumesday Book, “Gibbet Lore” reflects the spirit of the album most succinctly. A sardonic rocker that’s equal parts AC/DC, Meddle-era Pink Floyd, and Monty Python, the track walks the line between triumphant and absurd. In keeping with its sound, the video follows a theme of false optimism and quackery during plague times as revelers cavort and collapse at a festival of fools, bonded by a virus to their bubonic doom.
DARSOMBRA’s Brian Daniloski discloses, “As is often the case with our songs, we are surprised with what the muse brought us with ‘Gibbet Lore.’ The intro and main guitar riff/loop were something that just popped into my head one day in an instant. I sang it into my phone to save for posterity and further deliberation. Turns out it was in F, a key I almost never play in. The majority of the song was composed around the guitar loop, with vocals and keys based upon the ideas the loop inspired in us–not to mention the surprise of discovering it was the right thing to mix audio clips of a prank call I recorded when I was an adolescent, and geothermal vents (a.k.a. ‘mudpots’) by the Salton Sea into the stew of the song.”
About the creation of the video, Ann Everton reveals, “Again, the muse’s connections were obscure when it came time to compose the video–a wolf howling on top of a mountain became a dog howling on a hill, the ominous toll of a slowed-down hand bell called for the lonely turning of a wagon wheel deep in a desolate forest (‘bring out your dead’ indeed), and the plague-stricken dancers in loosely-interpreted Ren Fest garb. Although this work comes from the unique visions of camp DARSOMBRA, we really are just listening to the muse and following her lead, whether we like it or not!”
The Sleeping Shaman writes, “How would you describe a band like DARSOMBRA? Psych, kraut, prog, post-rock, post-metal, doom, drone, or even good old rock and roll? Maybe it’s all of them, or even none of them as it’s down to your own senseless interpretation as to the sonics this eclectic, and genre-defying, duo unleash to the unsuspecting masses.”
Tune in to The Sleeping Shaman and tap out to DARSOMBRA’s “Gibbet Lore” video RIGHT HERE.
DARSOMBRA will release Dumesday Book on CD, 2xLP, and all digital platforms through their own Pnictogen Records on August 25th. Find preorders for all formats/bundles at the band’s webshop HERE and Bandcamp where several songs are streaming HERE.
Additional videos for the album are to be expected.
Having just returned from several weeks of touring around the Great Lakes, DARSOMBRA will embark on the Dumesday Book Tour across North America in the weeks ahead. With shows confirmed from August through October, the trek begins with a performance at the off-the-grid Voice Of The Valley Festival in Fairview, West Virginia on August 5th. Then on August 25th, the day Dumesday Book sees release, the band will set out across the continent once again, leading with a hometown record release show. Nearly three-dozen performances later, the tour will come to a finale at the Shadow Woods Reunion in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania with Panopticon and more. See the current itinerary below and stand by as the band continues to book new excursions into the Fall and Winter months.
DARSOMBRA Dumesday Book Tour:
8/05/2023 Voice Of The Valley – Fairview, WV
8/25/2023 Current Space – Baltimore, MD * Record Release Show w/ Moth Broth, Quattracenta
8/31/2023 Melody Inn – Indianapolis, IN w/ Stuporwaffles, Mycota
9/01/2023 Village Theatre – Davenport, IA w/ The House Flies
9/02/2023 Gabe’s – Iowa City, IA w/ Aseethe, Louisiana Drifter, OSO
9/03/2023 White Squirrel – St. Paul, MN w/ Beach Mountain, Loser Magnet
9/04/2023 The Aquarium – Fargo, ND w/ Shut Up Trinity, DEATHKREW, Dakota Magick, H.E.R., more
9/29/2023 Filling Station – Bozeman, MT w/ The Dean Wakerlin Sonic Bliss Bath
9/30/2023 Black Hills Psych Fest @ Aby’s – Rapid City, SD w/ The Savage Blush, Diaphane, Thought Patrol, more
10/02/2023 Vinyl–ly Alive – Soldier Creek, SD
10/03/2023 2SMOO – Lincoln, NE w/ Our Last Atlas
10/04/2023 TBA – Peoria, IL w/ Sanddance
10/05/2023 Blind Bob’s – Dayton, OH w/ Into Pandemonium
10/06/2023 Art Party – Morgantown, WV w/ Grey Harbinger, The Long Hunt
10/07/2023 Mushroom City Art Fest – Baltimore, MD w/ Miles Gannett, Dave Heumann, Marian McLaughlin, more
10/11/2023 Mama Tried – Brooklyn, NY w/ Sally Gates/Zoh Amba/Brian Chase Trio, Ala Muerte
10/12/2023 Cold Spring Hollow – Belchertown, MA w/ Junk Orbit, Knobclaw
10/13/2023 Geno’s – Portland, ME w/ MoMe, This World Has Bees
10/14/2023 Loading Dock – Littleton, NH w/ Ari Bopp
10/19/2023 O’Brien’s – Boston, MA w/ Dyr Faser, The O–Zones, FEEP
10/20/2023 The Century – Philadelphia, PA w/ Stinking Lizaveta, Rope Trick
10/21/2023 Shadow Woods Reunion @ Lovedraft’s Brewing – Mechanicsburg, PA w/ Panopticon, A Sound Of Thunder, IATT, more
Originally conceived as a surreal take on a pop album to contrast with their ominously prescient monolithic 2019 release, Transmission, Dumesday Book is a ten-song survey of sentiment and human experience in the pandemic, from initial lockdown to vaccinated re-emergence and beyond – which, in the DARSOMBRA microcosm, means from cancelled tours to returning to the road.
Fittingly, DARSOMBRA’s Brian Daniloski and Ann Everton wrote the framework for the album during the quarantine of Spring 2020, and then tirelessly refined it over the next three years. At times bizarre, intense, mollifying, sardonic, irreverent, overwhelming, and hopeful, Dumesday Book takes its name from the 11th century census book which served as the oldest public record in the English language, Domesday Book – so named because its decisions were unalterable, its sentence was law, and its survey of human activity so complete. The album’s sound follows the theme of survey as well, with glam-prog frivolity giving way to heavy psych doomscapes laden with music concrète field recordings. A bong rip takes you from a disconcerting chord progression to a goblin doggerel dirge, all to resolve into a space-shimmery synthcapade laced with heart-fueled guitar riffs worthy of any Krautrockian nod for a non-Teutonic band. Of course, there are serious moments of rock woven throughout this hour-plus-long musical journey, but to typify Dumesday Book as simply drone, or metal, or psych – or even prog – is missing the point.
