GOD IS ALONE IN HEAVEN // WiToWMaKeR

 

WiToWMaKeR is the solo project of multi-talented  Religious Girls front-man Chris Danko. Following on the heels of last year's ambient/experimental project Where Are and the amazing one-off collab with Party Trash TOO DEEP,  Danko turns in his most fully realized work yet, a   witchy-goth take on 2-step and UK garage.  God Is Alone In Heaven is witch house 2.0, realizing the potential latent in the genre; a nearly perfect blending of goth sensibility and actual dance music.

Strong thematic elements related to the concept enunciated in the title are woven into the record, unifying the tracks into a coherent album that demands to be listened to as-a-set.

"INTRO" sets the stage with its' spoken-word musings on energy being vampirically drawn from humans by the world, before dropping into the banger "NUMSKOLL", which  brings some serious dancefloor cred to the table. On "SUMBODI", the simple looping of a slowed vocal sample draws real emotion and meaning from the electronic track,  mourning lost love and contemplating the impossibility of recovery. "HEADBANGA" with its' acidic wobbles, is a convincing take on bro-step, as the title suggests. "FOREVER"is one of the albums highlights.  A track formed around a plaintive female vocal, it's seriously beautiful,  the lyrics reinforcing the emotional theme of the album.  "PARASITE" is a trip to ghostly techno-garage land before the album's undeniable climax;  the stunning "HEARTACHE (GOD IS ALONE IN HEAVEN)", with its' deeper-than-the-ocean bass and subtle sub-sonics.  The  "OUTRO" utilizes a bit of sampled movie dialog (Melancholia) that completes a dark portrait of our universe, where God has turned his back on the world, and we are completely alone.

Released through Aural Sects / Downsided Records / Popgang Records  God Is Alone In Heaven is available as on  a beautiful 12" vinyl release  which you can purchase HERE and for  download  on Beatport, iTunes and Spotify.

Follow WiToWMaKeR's Soundcloud.

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EP: WiToWMaKeR "Where Are"

Witowmaker is a recording project of Chris Danko, of Religious Girls and a half-dozen other projects (including TOO DEEP, blogged here yesterday). Where Are is lush ambient/experimental music, and a free download from AMDISCS. Definitely worthy, the sound quality is rich--nothing lo-fi about it---and the tracks hold up well to repeated listening. Download the zip from HERE.

New Artist: TOO DEEP

I followed a link on Facebook and found TOO DEEP  last week, to my delight. The Soundcloud page was new--only a few followers, zero comments, and little information beyond "a collaboration between two special artists", and yet this stuff was hotter than fuck, and clearly not the work of  beginners. It's not often I hear tracks that make me run to my computer to make a blog post; this stuff rocked-to-the-max.

While I ruminated on this post, the lovely Mishka beat me to the punch with their post, which revealed the identities of these 'special artists', who turn out to be pretty fucking special indeed. TOO DEEP is a virtual super-group, or at least it's a collaboration between two of the post-witch house underground-internet-music-scene's  brightest stars, both alumnus of Aural Sects and AMDISCS; Chris Danko of the amazing band Religious Girls and his solo-project Witowmaker and Joe Volmer of Party Trash, Police Academy 6 and Blown.

The collaboration turned out to be fruitful, and sounds quite unlike any of their previous work.  TOO DEEP the album is the result,  fourteen tracks of deliciously detailed, impeccably produced, garage-inspired post-dubstep EDM that will please the hordes of UK garage fans and underground net-geeks alike. TOO DEEP is a sort-of Where Were You In '92 for the later '90s; a loving homage to the best of  in UK garage, drum & bass and jungle techno, but filtered through post-witch house sensibilities of  Volmer and Danko.

I've selected a few favorite's for sampling here but I strongly urge downloading the whole zip from their Bandcamp, linked HERE. The individual tracks are downloadable from their Soundcloud, for cherry pickers.