The sophomore 4-track EP, “Dreams Rain in Minds” by Drim, the DIY one-man band from Toulouse, Southern France, combines the glacial monochromatic starkness of Cold Wave with sweeping, at times cathartic, moody outbursts of reverb-drenched feedback racket, to build tormented headspaces of gloom and anxiety, shining brightly in their own darkness.
The best specimen of the above said, like the even louder and slightly psychedelic swirling opener “Heavy Bags”, is “My Internal Clock”, which sounds like early dry angular Go-Betweens awash in MBV’s walls of noise, driven by hypnotic punchy snares and somber droning synth bass oscillations, winding along with obsessively echoed, sparkling wistful guitar arpeggios, intermittently blasted by crushes of abrasive fuzzy distortion and harrowing high-pitched wails, as soft, alienated and melancholic vocals sulk in anxious doom for a mental peace that possibly will never come, amid a spectral, tight yet mesmeric stirring coda.
The closer “Final light?”, already included in the debut homemade 6-tracker from 2022 in a lo-fi compressed version, takes on further distinctive nuances in a vibrant mesh of shadowy yet glowing crepuscular intensity ala The KVB, where urgent hypnotic drum beats and reverberant crispy claps ricochet against bleak humming basslines, washing over an abrasively pain-filled chord progression, to weave a twinkling and forlorn meandering trail that twirls, wriggles and finally quavers and soars with reverberating profound emotional poignancy over restless spoken words, intermingling with gentle introspective cries, lost in racing thoughts, turning awkward and doomy.
A significant step forward from the already grabbing debut especially in terms of sound dynamics, with four chilly misty slices of doomgaze cloaked in an overarching introspective and depressive ambience so bleak and compelling.
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Photo by @sevnty_5
