Dead Waves deliver a double dose of disturbing darkness with their spectral and skeletal single Secret Violence / The Visitor Part 2 — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
On this ominously grim outing, N.Y.C. siblings Nick and Teddy Panopoulos — who have been churning out dazzling outsider music for a decade — descend even further, conjuring a state of paranoid claustrophobia intensity by way of sparse, muffled sounds. Secret Violence and The Visitor Part 2 are chilling songs that use the gentlest means, the sublets grooves, 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 forebears, Dead Waves project a vision of its city that is as lonesome, imposing and perilous as moonlit desert canyons.
“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,” Teddy says. “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.”
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 the basics.
“It’s pretty much us always listening to ourselves and challenging ourselves, exploring whatever it was that was trying to come out of us,” Teddy continues. “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, and mastered by Kim Rosen (Wynonna Judd, Billy Bragg). Listen to Secret Violence / The Visitor Part 2 below and follow Dead Waves on Facebook and Instagram.
