LOS ANGELES, CA- It had been a looooong while since the last time I was able to catch a DRÆMINGS performance, but I made it a point to drive across town after a gig to catch them perform at Zebulon last month. After all, ever since my buddy Max waxed poetic about them last year, how could I not owe it to myself to make the time?
Some time has passed since Max saw DRÆMINGS perform live, and as is the trend of life, things evolve. As the band recently mentioned in a social media post, the are busy in the studio, evolving their sound for the next musical step. Per the band:
“We’ve been quiet on here lately- focusing a lot on writing this album. Creating a new sonic world to exist in. Making creative choices around how we want to record. This project has been around for a while and has seen so many different faces. Always changing and growing and dreaming of a new horizon.”
At Zebulon, I was lucky to catch a small glimpse of that evolution.
As a I stepped into the venue, one of the opening acts, Crook was still performing on stage. Bold and cinematic, Crook’s sonics would serve as a quenching foreshadow for what was to come. DRÆMINGS’ performance was equally so.
DRÆMINGS’ music has always been lush, dramatic and sophisticated. Their latest (2017) self titled EP found them focusing on writing, recording and producing music as a collective, and they have been releasing little nuggets of music in the form of singles ever since with their latest being “Stranger Than Believing” which will give listeners the sense that Depeche Mode, NIN and Florence & The Machine had a love child.
Kimi Recor, DRÆMINGS’ front-woman, prefaced the performance by letting the crowd know that if anybody were expecting “the hits”, they would be disappointed, because on this evening, the band would be treating the crowd in Zebulon with all of the new music that that the band has been, and continues to be, working on.
Kimi’s undeniably pristine, soprano vocals still serve as the centerpiece of DRÆMINGS’ music, but the groups’ use of heavy synths and wild guitars seem so much more prominent in the new cuts. Much darker. Much richer. More present.
They played the free show to try out their new music to “see how it feels”, and though I don’t know how they felt about it personally, I can attest that their new music had me feeling excited about what was, and is, to come.
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