Art d'Ecco, Dagger Polyester — live event
Art d'Ecco, Dagger Polyester Does life have meaning or a purpose? What distinguishes good from evil? Do individuals enjoy free will or is destiny preordained? Critical thinkers – Sartre, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky – have pondered such questions for centuries. Serene Demon dispatches them in under 39 minutes, reflecting Art d’Ecco’s singular focus on his fourth album: “I was determined, in an almost monomaniacal way, to prove that I can do something different.” One need only to listen to the title track to recognize his success. Composing “Serene Demon” required two months’ time and deep reserves of creativity. The premise may seem straightforward (“it’s literally an existentialist and a true believer walk into a bar and debate”) but the execution is anything but, incorporating four distinct sections, a fluid tempo, and a myriad of tone colors as it veers between intimate and epic moments across seven and a half minutes. Likewise, the song’s succinct lyrics belie the enormity of its subject matter. “I've always been fascinated with the seduction of evil that lurks within us, and not just the archetype of the angel and the devil on each shoulder.” Evil can take many forms: self doubt, Imposter Syndrome, the unrelenting darkness of depression and anxiety. Yet out of this miasma, Art d’Ecco emerges triumphant. “That song is the most challenging thing I’ve ever written.” If you’re going to interrogate the nature of existence, best to live a little first. At the outset of making Serene Demon, our hero did just that. In fall 2022, he rented an apartment in New York City. With cinematic soundtracks from Henry Mancini and Ennio Morricone to John Barry and François de Roubaix in his earbuds, Art explored the City That Never Sleeps. “I would take long, solitary walks. I would sit up at a bar and talk to strangers. I'd go to shows and art galleries by myself. I felt like an Alain Delon character, like in Le Samouraï,” a mysterious loner in a nocturnal world. “Then I’d come back to the piano, have a glass of wine, and write.” But let’s not oversimplify. For Art d’Ecco, “writing” a song means more than just coaxing forth a melody and sprinkling some rhymes over the top. “I write with tone and sound,” he explains. Are the strings pizzicato or legato? Does that haunting motif call for saxophone or clarinet? No detail escapes his scrutiny. “Once I've found that, the secret sauce of instrumentation, then it’s on to lyrics that tell the story. That’s the last piece of the puzzle.” In the months that followed his New York sojourn, Art pushed his limits and took risks, some more successful than others. Ecstatic when Grammy Award-winning producer and engineer Joe Chiccarelli (The White Stripes, The Strokes, Beck, U2) expressed interest in working on his new material, Art soon came to realize that their methods and concepts didn’t align as closely as hoped; after two weeks of production in Vancouver (including some “great ideas” that made it to the final record), they parted ways. Yet despite his “ferocious, introverted independence,” Art recognized that he couldn’t realize his ambitious vision single-handedly. Nearly 30 musicians contributed to making Serene Demon, and three of the new songs blossomed from collaborative exercises with his rhythm section, drummer Malcolm Holt and bassist Pascal Le Vasseur; for indie disco floor-filler “Tree of Life,” the trio took inspiration from the relentless momentum of the Bee-Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing.” Serene Demon may be Art d’Ecco’s most ambitious album to date, but fans won’t struggle to recognize his handiwork. For all its hints of mystery, opener “True Believer” picks up the thread of last summer’s non-album single “I Feel Alive.” The push-and-pull of “Tree of Life” could’ve easily propelled it into heavy MTV rotation in the heyday of the Psychedelic Furs, while the slinky “Shell Shock” and its Roland SH-2000 synth grooves evokes memories of Steve Miller’s “Fly Like An Eagle.” Even the audacious title tune is carefully sequenced between a moody instrumental (“Meursault’s Walk,” a nod to Camus’ The Stranger) and an upbeat pop tune (“Honeycomb”) embellished with steel drum. Like Bowie and Björk, Miles Davis and Kate Bush, Art d’Ecco intends to keep nudging his listeners forward, prompting them to explore - and accept - unfamiliar ideas. “Once you've trained the ear of the audience, it establishes a new precedent,” he concludes. Tastes change and evolve, and outliers mature into icons. “That moves pop music forward in the most beautiful, organic way, and I'm constantly trying to exist within that paradigm. How do I challenge myself and throw the rule book out, but still make this the catchiest, quirkiest piece of music possible? I like existing between those two worlds.” Great pop music accommodates big ideas and simple truths with equal finesse, but don’t expect a record - even one as ambitious as Serene Demon - to solve all life’s mysteries. “If you're constantly searching for answers or hope to bestow any relevance to the existence that you're living, then take a pause and realize that life is happening right now,” concludes Art. “You don’t need to constantly defer happiness. Just exist in the moment.” Pull back the red velvet curtain of the Los Angeles underground scene and centerstage you will find Dagger Polyester. Their daring mash up of punk, glam, and art rock paves the way for a new wave of rock music that defies any effort of categorization. The result is a sound that is not bogged down by gimmicks and cliches - a subversive authenticity that finds harmony in the contradictions and is reflective of Dagger’s own journey in their gender transition. Dagger’s music is inspired by the peculiar, the theatrical, and the unconventional. Influenced by everything from Roxy Music to Kenneth Anger, their songwriting investigates the thematic tension between performative masculinity and queerness. This seeming clash in subject matter is unified in their art by being a vessel for sharp, but playful satire. For Dagger, you can point at a problem and scream at it or you can dance with it until it gets dizzy and falls on its head. Foxes Magazine has described Dagger’s sound as “far from retrospective - [where] grand, sweeping melodies contrast with… rapid, attention-deficit-genre-switching render[ing] the music futuristic and beguiling… no genre is left unadulterated. Kids just can’t sit still anymore and Dagger is no exception.” Featured in an Alternative Press article detailing respected LA photographer Richie Lee Davis’s new fanzine, Davis states how Dagger’s unmatched style “shows you that their vision is truly their own. ”
Starts: 2025-06-08T19:00:00Z
Ends: 2025-06-08T21:00:00Z
Where: 2478 Fletcher Drive, Los Angeles, California 90039, United States
Price: $22.77