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(single Dec 2021)
CARPE DIEM ~ SEIZE THE DAAY ~ MAKE YOUR LIVES EXTRAORDINARY
I think this lot were born at the wrong time. I say that because I'm sure they'd have been pretty hot back in the seventies. I mean, to be fair, they're a little bit out there aren't they?
They look like the Pink Fairies, or a Syd Barrett side project, or escapees from the crazy world of Arthur Brown. And that's not all, because they probably live in a commune too; like Hawkwind, or Gong, or Can, or whichever of those bands used to live in a commune.
If only we could just shoot them back to the seventies, theyβd surely be supermassive... surely!
They've got everything those old prog's ever craved; flares and flower power, sunshine, psychedelia, some pseudo jazz and some subtle sub-prime minimalism - and that's just the music, don't get me started on the lyrics!
Oh, go on then...
let's throw some vaguely mystical lyrics into the mix, words put together with a poetic depth of thought, that sound like lyrics from different songs crashing and merging into one another, like some casualty ward for rhyming couplets, abstract words with absolute meaning.
I love the poetryness of it all, the feeling that you might just be able to grasp the meaning... if only you had a little more of that... that... that something in your immortal soul, that something, that glimpse of... of... everything.
Ok, I've been waiting to write about this band for a while now.
I think I found them at single number two. This is single number five, so it's taken me some time.
Why? Well, to be honest, I've been waiting for that take-your-breath-away, bad-boy banger that I believe they have in them. And, although I don't think they've quite got there yet, well, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do...
So, finding myself in the throes of an irrational spasm of affection, at last I'm making myself put pen to paper - about the music of this band called DAAY.
It's a kaleidoscope of colour splashed onto canvas, it swirls around and slides side to side across your senses, it's like sideways gravity, with a sort of incomprehensible sidelongness that almost magically seems to get through to you because it's speaking in tongues, but then it wanders off for a little walk before it takes off again like playful astronomy tinkering with the universe.
FOREVER is the band's attempt to explore what forever might actually mean.
Is it true that we exist as infinite consciousness, as claimed by theology and other esoteric traditions?
What is forever? Is it actually forever? Where will it all end? Is it contained inside something else?
It's all a bit magical mushroom trip, to be honest - yet FOREVER is just the latest in a series of musical questions that DAAY have been asking since the dawn of t... well, since 2020 anyway.
Taken altogether, the band's five releases (so far) create something of a cosmic jigsaw puzzle, a colossal art nouveau opus, a quixotic attempt at mapping the whole gamut of human experience.
Mama (2020) examines perspectives on femininity.
First Light (2021) the bandβs second single (which is a little confusing) finds comfort and rejuvenation at the start of a new day and serves as a metaphor for new beginnings and new life.
Little Foot (2021) is an angry, adolescent howl at the world, as humanity emerges from its childhood, not really knowing what's happening to it.
Dream Kit (2021) navigates our dreams and nightmares as metaphor for the troubled world that we've now arrived in as adults.
With two more singles due in early 2022, it's all coming together a bit like a concept album, y'know those fantastic records we used to enjoy in the seventies lol.
Anyway, what's a dream kit? Is it anything like a football kit? and when should you put it on?
DAAY are currently a six-piece band (although that could well have changed by the time anyone reads this pile of rubbish), their mainstay though, their cosmological constant if you will, is singer/guitarist Alex Barty-King.
Yes, I know... sounds like he's a throwback from The Simpsons, but no, Alex seems to be the complex guidance system that swims somewhere beneath DAAY's deep deep waters.
With a mindset decidedly more Dionysian than Apollonian, he treats the sensual and emotional facets of human nature as his songwriting source-book, creating hazy, melancholic music that's colourful and blissfully experimental.
An omnipresent saxophone is the icing on a very nice cake, and all I really want for Christmas now are some big big hooks and some humongous Zappa-esque guitar breaks, please...
The band are apparently based in Kilburn, (where I once took the high road, and you took the low road, and I was in Scotland afore ye) and appear to have had a fairly fluid line-up since their formation in 2019.
But, having said that, they've been pretty consistent with their release schedule, and I have to say I'm impressed with their branding and image management. It's fairly uncommon to find a newly formed band that gives that aspect of things too much attention... primary colours, geometric shapes, runic symbolism. ΞΞ
Anyway, as my old dad was fond of saying 'At the end of the daay, it's midnight'.
Find more DAAY by following these links...