New Orleans solo artist Cracksinthereal released “Dagaz” on December 19th, the first single from the forthcoming LP Alef: A Velvet Shard of Broken Night’s End. The project blends late 2000s Warp Records IDM, instrumental Nine Inch Nails, and The Cure. IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) emerged in the early 90s as experimental electronic music that took dance music’s rhythms and made them cerebral, abstract, and often impossible to actually dance to by design, so essentially anti-EDM.
The song has a 10-minute runtime, which can be quite intimidating for outsiders in such genres, but it’s pretty standard practice for any enthusiast of a post-rock derivative genre, as these songs usually traverse vast auditory landscapes to stimulate the mind as it wanders off to various modes of interiority. So by design it is vague and provides ample space for interpretation and adaptation to one’s own narrative, and every person’s experience with the song will be their own and might even be contradictory to the artist’s original intent or vision for the song, but therein lies the beauty of the human experience. Your experience shapes your reality, and it will shape your perception of this auditory journey.
However, the fact that your experience with it will be unique doesn’t mean it won’t share any commonalities with other people’s experiences, because we have common understandings and ideas about the textures used in the song. The song leans on the orchestral style of arrangement for most of its runtime, but those long, stretched out string sounds are accompanied by the occasional thumping of heavy industrial drum sounds, which gives it a flavor of surrealism.
Cracksinthereal’s building a world where sound design, abstraction, and emotional unease are the primary language. “Dagaz” is immersive and uncompromising, inviting listeners into a shadowed space where structure dissolves into sensation.
