released February 21, 2023

This album was written and recorded as the world fell on its side and slid dangerously into another bloody century. In our microcosm the sands were already shifting. The big business takeover of the old world of independent music venues, the shabby but passionate subculture we'd all grown up with - of regional music scenes, thriving in the pubs and back street clubs of so many of our UK cities - had begun. In 1999 the commercial world had finally woken up to the untapped potential in the dirty business of rock and roll and the kidz with a ‘zed’ were about to be sold out. Or should I say bought in? What a disaster. It was inevitable in retrospect but it came as an ugly shock and at a terrible price. But such is the back-hand of 'progress'. Like pre-Brit Pop, what was to come would define the era and the chaotic, colourful clamour that preceded it would be drowned out in all the applause and back slapping.

Dark Star like many other marginal bands were an awkward fit, existing as diverting curiosities - to those who noticed such things. An experimental three piece with a minimalist bent, more concerned with what would arise from play - creating through improvisation in windowless urban rehearsal rooms - than crafting songs for radio consumption or honing and selling a concept. There was no plan. No vision. Only to explore the moment, never questioning what arose or seeking to define it, refine, or control it. This was bound to cause A&R tensions in any era but perhaps the millennial funnel was a squeeze too far. In other more, ahem... 'progressive', dare I say 'naive' times this ethos (if indeed it even was one) could have been seen as a potential asset to a developing band on a major label but in the ‘noughties’? Not a chance. Nadir.

When Coldplay dropped out of the sky and sold a million ‘units’ on their first release, naturally every major record company wanted 'one'. So yes, you guessed it, Dark Star were dropped to make way for a career hungry group of music college graduates and the album you are holding (the difficult second) was de-slated from EMI Harvest’s Spring of 2001 release schedule. Exploring existential themes - suicide, desertion/escape/abandon, the logic of acid trips and blood simple murderers, it wasn't a singalong. These three refugees from the wreckage of Levitation were, as Cally Callomon so bluntly put it “stripped of the chrome, lowered and sprayed matt black”. It was not all yellow.

If this is beginning to sound a little sour grape-y I can assure you it most certainly is not. Quite the contrary. You reap what you sow. Did I fail to mention our part in our own undoing? The wanton ambivalence? The creeping distain for the whole rough trade of the music business and a cold reticence to surf the cultural mudslide into the savage dumb-down of the coming age? Drug problems? Anger management issues? Issue issues? Probably all best left for the book. Could it have been otherwise? Possibly... but then again, there but for the grace of God...

I assert - and I would wouldn’t I? - that Dark Star has what's left of its -perhaps questionable - integrity intact. If indeed anyone still cares about such things.

Listen loud and at night. Do not wonder what could have been but trust in what was. Oh, and if you’re wondering what took us over twenty years to finally get here... you’ll have to wait for that book.

Or come find me on the other side.

With love
Bic Hayes 2023


Related projects:

levitationband.bandcamp.com/album/meanwhile-gardens
zofff.bandcamp.com
mikrokosmos.bandcamp.com
mummy.bandcamp.com
theconfinementtapes.bandcamp.com