New York City duo Dead Waves closes out 2023 with the surprise release of a new single, consisting of two new tracks: "Secret Violence/The Visitor Part 2" drops November 10th on the band's label, Entheon Records.
Stream "Secret Violence," here: https://deadwaves.com/album/secret-violence-the-visitor-part-2
Brothers Nick and Teddy Panopoulos are NYC natives who together have been churning out dazzling outsider-music under the Dead Waves name for a decade.
Perched in the outer reaches of Queens, watching from a distance as trends come and go, Nick and Teddy have marched to their own beat from the start, delivering highly compelling works of art that follow no one else's lead.
Initially bashing out noisy rock, with releases produced by the likes of Steve Albini and Martin Bisi, the brothers have gradually dropped the volume over the years and stripped things down to skeletal basics.
2018's God of the Wild and 2022's Abandoned Children saw Dead Waves submerge into a hypnagogic zone of murky psych and folk, at times utilizing a lyre in honor of their Greek heritage. Under The Radar's review of Abandoned Children states: "Nick and Teddy Panopoulos find fragile intensity in haunting psych and folk arrangements, creating raw, strange, and soulful meditations... perfectly balancing hypnotic, fractured beauty and raw simmering menace.”
On "Secret Violence" and "The Visitor Part 2," Nick and Teddy have descended even deeper, conjuring a state of sheer intensity by way of sparse, muffled sounds. "Secret Violence" and "The Visitor Part 2" are chilling songs that use the gentlest means to imply the heaviest feelings.
With primitive drum machine, chiming guitar, and Teddy's whisper-soft vocals, recorded as if heard through a locked door, the duo summons a dream state that shimmers with faint reflections of Suicide and early Sonic Youth; like those great NYC bands, Dead Waves projects a vision of its city that is as lonesome and perilous as moonlit desert canyons.
Teddy says this about the new songs: "I was tapping into that ghostly, yet beautiful, freeing feeling of living in the in-between states of our existence, between what we perceive as being awake here in the present and what we perceive as being in a dream. And in that in-between feeling, being aware of all the pain and suffering that was brought on by some external factors trying to inhibit our true psyche, and escaping them. Escaping from the corrupt and complacent, dull, bland, safe, consumeristic, detached, arrogant, delusional, matrix-like nightmare existence they created. And not letting them get away with it anymore. They are getting back the energy they deserve, as when we regain our true selves in that in-between state, channeling the blurred lines, brushing with our inner consciousness and manifesting it into our present. Owning this existence."
Teddy gives this statement about Dead Waves' progression over the past decade: "It's pretty much us always listening to ourselves and challenging ourselves, exploring whatever it was that was trying to come out of us. We always wanted to experiment with every sound we had available to us, always having fun and trying out whatever instruments or sounds we were feeling in that moment, and we always listened to ourselves, not compromising anything and keeping our expression honest and real. So it's like we went on this journey and now we're back to where we started, embracing the innocence of it again, but full of experience and seeing even more clearly that our inclinations and feelings when we first started, ended up being true. And now, kind of giving ourselves a pat on the back, thanking ourselves for never trying to be something we're not or compromising our music, our expression, for anything or anyone, or to use music for the wrong reasons, chasing fame and fortune or whatever bullshit thing people use it for, to fill their empty void. We do it for therapy, to get by. For existence."
"Secret Violence" and "The Visitor Part 2" were recorded and mixed by Dead Waves at their home studio in Queens, NY, and mastered by Kim Rosen (Wynonna Judd, Billy Bragg).
Tracklist:
1) Secret Violence
2) The Visitor Part 2
Discography:
Secret Violence/The Visitor Part 2 (2023, Entheon Records)
Abandoned Children (2022, Entheon Records)
God of the Wild (2018, Entheon Records)
The Great Clock (2017, self-released)
Living Inside (2016, self-released)
Nature (2015, self-released)
Oracles of the Grave/Promise (2014, self-released)
Take Me Away (2013, self-released)
Lineup:
Nick Panopoulos - guitar, bass, drum machine
Teddy Panopoulos - guitar, vocals
Photo by Ursula Sommer
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