“This band is unique. The Dark Whale sound like a group of ancient folk musicians transported through time and placed inside a futuristic washing machine. Absolutely sublime.”
– Kevin Sherry from Attic Lights (Island Universal Records/Elefant records)
“The Dark Whale have the lyrics & sound of something acutely on the edge of things. A visceral musical approach and moving observations fill their songs with a rare depth of melancholic longing & urgency.” – Duncan Lloyd from Maximo Park (Too Much Information – Banquet Records)
WHAT IS THE DARK WHALE?
The Dark Whale are a transatlantic, transtemporal band with members from Scotland, England and the USA. Their sound has elements of such wide-ranging artists as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Wilco, Pink Floyd, Mercury Rev, Yo La Tengo, Cat Le Bon, Tame Impala and The Flaming Lips. They are influenced by the intertwining production styles of the Wu Tang Clan, TV on the Radio and Fleet Foxes.
It began (nameless) with an asynchronous X-track experiment. Then came another song, then another. The group grew a name and an identity and has evolved into a vast subsonic machine, existing in a series of tubes under the ocean and signals across the air.
Each member of The Dark Whale writes, sings, and plays across the tracks. All are vocalists and multi-instrumentalists, building a sound that stacks and layers like a landscape of colliding and harmonizing tones. Hinting always at what is unseen or lurking, they push sonic boundaries with their multitudinous overlapping instruments, voices, and effects. It is at once nostalgic and futuristic, suggestive of the fragmentation of time and communication that can be a destructive force but is also the source of asynchronicity and the origin of The Dark Whale themselves.
Beneath the surface shifting weight, there’s something underneath…
What is The Dark Whale? Psycho-folk-rock with echoes of sweaty nights, claustrophobic carnival beer stalls, and midnight mountainsides in ancient Sumeria.
What is The Dark Whale? The craziest and moist poignant Zoom call you’ve ever been on.
What is The Dark Whale? The echoing mass beneath the void, calling out in its alien language.
The Dark Whale rises from the depths of this new era.
WHO ARE THE DARK WHALE?
Ian, Brady, and Tom met in Hanoi, Vietnam, and formed a band that played in a cave on an island, and helped to transform the explosion that is the Hanoi music scene. They dispersed to their homelands in the UK and the Western US. Then came the pandemic, and the invention of a way of making music together without meeting.
Ian is Scottish, former frontman of Newcastle-based band Spacehawke, and singer and drummer of SID BANO and The Props. He’s also a painter and has shown his artwork at several local exhibitions.
Brady is American, former frontman of Denver-based band Sweetwater Mojo, and singer and harmonica player of Transhypnotic, Sodawagon, and The Props. Brady also plays informally in folk-rock circles.
Tom is an English-born American polyglot, formerly of San Francisco band The Phobes, Hanoi band The Props, and Bristol band Hallelujah Plastic. Tom recently learned how to service automated sprinkler systems.
Email: thedarkwhale8@gmail.com