Insect Ark, the Berlin-based duo featuring Dana Schechter (Swans) and Tim Wyskida (Khanate), have shared a second-track from their upcoming album, ‘Raw Blood Singing’ (due out on June 7 via Debemur Morti Productions), with the release of The Frozen Lake. Listen to The Frozen Lake via YouTube below.
“’The Frozen Lake’ is a sort of sick romantic fairy tale,” Schechter explains. “It takes place during winter, hidden far in the forest. The song is in essence a murder ballad: the heartsick protagonist, spurned by her lover, spins a sordid tale of his sacrifice by her hand. It doesn’t end well for him, but from this release, they are both set free.”
Wyskida shares how the seven-and-a-half minute track came to be: “When Dana and I started working on songs for the new album, she played me recordings of various ideas. These days, I rarely hear a riff that gets my juices flowing. Dana had a great lap steel guitar riff. I had a separate idea, using fast cymbal bell patterns with bass drum hits, which sound like distant seismic events. I’ve always liked pieces of music that shift suddenly and drastically between inconspicuously related environments. In ‘The Frozen Lake,’ divergent environments collide.”
Over the eight-songs that make up ‘Raw Blood Singing,’ Insect Ark weaves a lush, bleak, vast and expansive landscape as they move from whispers of synth to a monstrous wall-of-sound via Schechter’s blistering lap steel playing, diabolical bass-work and the mammoth, searing power of Wyskida’s drums.
‘Raw Blood Singing’ track list
1. Birth of a Black Diamond
2. The Frozen Lake
3. Youth Body Swayed
4. Cleaven Hearted
5. The Hands
6. Psychological Jackal
7. Inverted Whirlpool
8. Ascension
Album pre-orders are available now (https://bfan.link/raw-blood-singing), with the collection available on multiple limited-edition vinyl variants, as well as CD and digitally.
More about Insect Ark
Insect Ark is Dana Schechter (bass/lap steel/synth/vocals) and Tim Wyskida (drums/percussion). Previously a solo endeavor led by Schechter, the band has released three albums: ‘Future Fossils’ (2021), ‘The Vanishing’ (2020) and ‘Marrow Hymns’ (2018). ‘Raw Blood Singing,’ Insect Ark’s fourth full-length, is the result of a year spent writing. Sharing an obsession with innovation and distillation, the duo merged to create a sonic landscape which vacillates between sensory overload and isolation in a seething void. Many of the songs on ‘Raw Blood Singing’ were penned alone by Schechter; they were gutted, reworked and rebirthed when Wyskida joined.
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