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Dark Descended

by Benedict Heaney

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Tommy Longfellow
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Tristan Bath
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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    Hand-dubbed* "retro" art edition
    : 10 red'n'black coloured cassettes
    : professionally custom cut length
    : original artwork
    : full digital download

    * Each cassettes individually dubbed using original Nakamichi 'Cassette2' tape-deck.

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1.
Namibia 07:40
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2.
Murmurs 06:28
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3.
Anthony's Desert 03:47
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4.
Dark Descended 07:18
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5.
Adrift Alive 04:16
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6.
A Watcher By The Dead 07:28
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7.
Araknida 07:26
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8.
Space Underground 06:02
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about

Exploring a concept and meaning of the word Namibia, 'the vast nothingness’

Using a 1958 Fender Electric Violin as a starting point, I have tried to create a work that gives the listener something of the saturating, numbing effect of being overwhelmed by things beyond comprehension;

At the end of the 4 hour recording session I had recorded eight takes, each lasting about 7 minutes. One mix completed in the studio was created using just four of these takes: 2nd, 3rd, 4th and last… The result was an eerie creepy piece and the title track for this album.

:::::::
Review from Nightshift Magazine
December 2017

`Dark Descended’
What Ben Heaney doesn’t know about the electric violin isn’t worth a shilling and his defiantly experimental eight track release as Deltaviolin has to be one of the most carefully constructed musical statements of any Oxford artist in 2017. The immediate reference point is The Residents, the anonymous weirdos who devoted a whole album to the theme of an Eskimo whale hunt almost four decades ago now. While that dark and at times deliberately inaccessible oeuvre ended on a melodic note and succeeded in chronicling the traditional existence of Arctic First Nations, ‘Dark Descended’ would appear to update the story in grim style, accounting for forty years of climate change and fracking as the icecaps melt beneath the igloos. It’s not an easy listen: opener ‘Namibia’ is the most uncompromising cut of all, perhaps recalling, in the manner of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s ‘Mladic’, one of the nastiest events of 20th Century history, the massacre of the Herero peoples that foreshadowed the Holocaust. Whether that is the intention, one can only guess but it’s a bitterly atonal effort, the violin’s wailing echoing mournfully and profoundly unsettling. Unsurprisingly for an album titled as it is, the mood doesn’t lift – ‘Adrift Alive’ could have been the soundtrack to the movie Open Water that saw a couple on a diving holiday left to the sharks, the music’s ripples and eddies providing an illusion of eternal buoyancy. ‘A Watcher by the Dead’ is more low-key growl than full on aural assault and hence might be deemed the most palatable track on the album but it’s hardly designed for the Westgate on a Saturday afternoon. Therein perhaps, lies the slight problem: ‘Dark Descended’ is an artfully constructed whole but needs a change of pace to elevate it to a place among the best experimental albums. That might have occurred had recent release and Nightshift Demo of the Month ‘Ghost Notes’ been included. Still, as an exercise in using an instrument to explore unlikely musical alleyways, this is a significant contribution.
(Written by Rob Langham)

credits

released January 10, 2018

This album was made possible by Nightshift Music Magazine in Oxford, as the debut ∆V EP was awarded their Demo of the Month (Sept.2017) prize of 4 hours in Soundworks Recording Studio, Oxford.

Written & Performed by Ben Heaney, electric violin
Recorded at Soundworks Studio, Oxford by Umair Chaudhry
Produced at Benbecula Studio by Deltaviolin
Original digital artwork, Ben Heaney

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Benedict Heaney England, UK

Composer & collaborator

Benedict Heaney Digital : Electric : Acoustic : Noise : Sound : Music

Electric violinist & electric violin historian

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