It’s not often you encounter a record as wonderfully diverse and sonically satisfying as this one by relatively unknown (to me at least) London duo Daona. Every single moment of this gem sparkles with conviction, eats into your consciousness like a Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus LP, but revelling (or should that be devilling) from a more pagan outlook.
The flavours here are very powerful, and could easily relate to esoteric itch of Current 93, the shadowy neo-classical zithers of Cyclobe or UnicaZürn, the Eyes Wide Shut-like masquerade of the protagonists gazing into the mirror darkly or the sketch-like unheimlich of some of the ambiences, vulture-ing and vaporous, the simmer of electronic debris chromatically coveting the occult of the less pencilled.
The ten-minute centrepiece “Nosferatu” is a disembodied folk number with swanking ravens and descending violin. This ascorbic guitar rooting the narrative out of the damp soil, a dark energy gnawing at Max Schreck’s haunted eyes, the pale-skinned cinematics of Werner Hertzog’s redux clearing to a pumping heart and spooky Bertolt Brecht-like Germanics. The delay-soaked acappella that follows fraying into tensive strums that eat up the scenery to dervish moans. The harsh industrialised exorbitance that rears up occasionally, musing over romancing vocals, the condenser mic swirling the cigarette spirals of some smoky club plucked from a vanishing memory. The sonics full of shadowy intent as “Reynardine”’s folklore fingers creep up your spine (Fairport Convention never sounded this eerie).This is unsettling, bountiful: “The Hunt Of The Unicorn” chambering a Dead Can Dance possessiveness, its piano shivers caught on lost girl murmurs. “Espiritu Santo”‘s chorusing megrims and snorting farmyards funnelling into a distorted voice warning: “He is coming” (a Nazarene-less visitation, no doubt). The scissored umbilical of Fovea Hex snakes disquietly through, torn from another time and tied to the warping enquiry of a cranked radio dial, the echoey recoil of a piano’s innards scattered amongst church organ drones, prophesying voices and recounted dreams, all gestating expectation, nocturne-clipping their wings on a naked flame.
The Secret Assembly is a wondrous beast that ends on “Angel”’s drone-caught vocal eddies to discordant sax from Evan Parker, a cicada limping into a synthesised hum and scrawling sax return sinking in strung-out medolics. Daona’s début album is mid-year high, full of bold colours that are definitely made to last.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
