Dark Arts
Reviews:
"Stroom induce heavy swoons with Dark Arts’ anthology of classy late ‘80s/mid ‘90s/ late ’00s goth, neofolk and atmospheric music that somehow got swept under the carpet of time...
Centring on the work of Stephanie Payne, who conceived Dark Arts with friends in Columbus, OH, 1983, and remains its sole member, ‘Reflections in a rear view mirror’ supplies a necessary overview of the act between their 1991 debut album and occult ambient practice of 2008. Theirs is a classic tale rooted in a medium-sized town, where music and its associated culture provided a portal for youthful energies to sync in and drop out; from playing in Toy Division - a Joy Division covers band using toy instruments - to DJing and booking bands at the local “cool” venue, Crazy Mama’s; and eventually signing off a letter and demo to Steve Albini, who would sign their first 12”, ‘A Long Way From Brigadoon’ to his Ruthless Records in 1985. From here they would play support for Big Black, and their influences only grew to encompass krautrock, ambient, folk, and spiritual musics, leading o the conception of the band heard on this record.
Spanning 10 songs shuffled anachronistically, the set skates the
timeline from material recorded in 1989 that ended up on ‘Carnival Of
Lost Souls’, including the sleepwalking neofolk of ‘The More Things Stay
The Same’ and the ruby red kiss of ‘Chemia’, to what sounds like
Berntholer or a Tuxedomoon instrumental in the chamber-like arabesque
‘Fragments of a Smile’, her etheric B-side dirge ‘Grey Eyes Is Glass’,
and the mulky ambience of ‘Lament’, which all come from the mid ‘90s,
and thru to with more quizzical and esoteric developments with the
possessed scenes of 2008’s ‘Memory of a Dream’ and the folksy,
proto-Larping regression of ‘Golden Fond Memories’. Were it not for
Stroom these songs and this vibe may have remained neglected, overlooked
by the history books but, now presented in this context in 2020, the
Dark Arts endure due to quality of their spell casting." -
Boomkat.com
1/24/2020
"Reflections In A Rear View Mirror« is a tonally and stylistically extremely diverse anthology of Dark Arts, which was founded in the early 1980s. The band around keyboarder and multi-instrumentalist Stephanie Payne moves seamlessly across boundaries of style and genre. The musicians from Columbus, Ohio switch effortlessly from an echo laden synthesizer ambience to relaxed Krautrock improvisation and atmospherically dense sound collages, a repetitive electro bass figure and s tring-driven opulent melancholic oriental ballads to almost traditional sounding folk excursions from the Balkans to Great Britain and Greece. The music sounds voluptuous without appearing pathetic and uses a wide range of instruments. Many acoustic stringed instruments from all over the world are used, plus many percussion instruments, bowed gongs, dulcimer, piano, flutes, accordion, balaphone, hurdy-gurdy and jew’s harp. On some more song-oriented tracks the warm alto voice of Sue Ann Mason is heard as well. With »Reflections In A Rear View Mirror« by Dark Arts, the Belgian label Stroom once again proves its special hand at digging up forgotten or lost musical treasures." - Andreas Brüning / Sebastian Hinz for HHV Records 1/21/2020