After several singles, the singer and songwriter DARK has released Nightmare, an EP that gathers her first five singles. Deeply rooted in the darkwave genre, this mini-album is a concentrate of dark music at the surface. It is available since December 24, 2020, in digital format and a vinyl edition will be released around summer. It has been released in 100-cassette edition that it’s already sold out.
How not to think in the Golden Age of Goth when listening to Nightmare? But it’s not just a revivalist exercise. Here, the voice tone is so destructured by the effects that the lyrics are at the limit of audibility. Far from dehumanizing the human voice, they transform it into a tortured expression of the soul, dark and decadent. In terms of musical writing, the riffs and harmonies are simple, but they wonderfully underline the darkness that emanates from Nightmare. The energy of the background is very rhythmic, sometimes influenced by post punk. Its precision could be confusing, combined with a rather magmatic vocal line, but the gritty texture of the overall soundscape lessens this difference.
With Nightmare, DARK lays the foundations of its musical aesthetics through a quality EP that lets us foresee good things regarding the productions that will follow it. A sequel that we will hope for with more varied titles as much from the sound viewpoint as from the musical composition.
Translation: Joanne Gagnon
