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Dark Dark Dark

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Listeners everywhere are having a very emotional response to Dark Dark Dark's music. Their sophomore album, titled Wild Go, is ambitious and layered, welcoming and familiar, and reminds us to seek out the wonder and magic that surround us all the time. Their sound sets Nona Marie Invie's soaring, haunted voice against an array of traditional instruments, balancing folk and high-art, creating music that is making people crazy.

The 10-song collection is a marked evolution for the group, which began in 2006 as a collaboration between Minneapolis based musicians Nona Marie Invie and Marshall LaCount. These two songwriters bring together disparate influences including minimalism, New Orleans jazz, Americana, Eastern European folk, and pop. Using stark contrast in texture, tone and imagery, the band has expanded and redefined their sound for the new album.

Wild Go's first single "Daydreaming" features Invie's warm voice and piano supported by spare, clean drums, guitar with lush reverb, cascades of dirty, distorted banjo, and an accordion wandering through the harmonies. The landscape created by the instruments reflects the one traveled by Invie - "I've been touring for so long now – and it's been great," she says, "but I have this internal conflict between having a nomadic lifestyle and needing a home."

In the studio the band worked with producer Tom Herbers (a Minneapolis stalwart known for his credits with the Jayhawks, Low, and Soul Asylum), recording live to tape at three different Minneapolis locations, including a renovated church/studio and an old theater. Of all the influences on Wild Go, perhaps the greatest is their dedication to live performance and touring, where many of Dark Dark Dark's songs first come to life. Playing together, the band lifts Invie and LaCount's songs to another level.

"We try to create a magical space with our performances," Invie says. "I'm always blown away by the number of people that come up to me afterward and say how much the music touched them. I love it when people can dance and have fun at our shows, but it's when people are quiet and I can tell that they are feeling it on a personal level that I feel like I'm really connecting."

Wild Go was released in October 2010 in the US on Supply & Demand Music, and was released April 2011 on Melodic in the UK and Europe.

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