About DVA Damas

Taylor Burch and Joe Cocherell. "Dva Damas has California written over it," says Taylor Burch, the band's founder and figurehead. Fitting, then, that they're the first act to release a record on Downwards America, the new US offshoot of Karl 'Regis' O'Connor's now two-decades-old, Birmingham-born label. Downwards America is being operated by Juan Mendez, O'Connor's longtime cohort and collaborator in Sandwell District; and it was Mendez who, after attending Dva Damas's first public live show in 2009, signed them on the spot to record their debut single. That self-titled, three-track EP came out on Downwards in 2010 - part of the DO series that O'Connor and Mendez co-curated and which introduced the world to such other notable talents as Tropic of Cancer (of which Burch is a touring member), Pink Playground and The KVB. The 10″s title track remains, for this writer, the band's calling card, a deliciously swaggering synthesis of post-punk minimalism and bloodthirsty, Crampsy rock 'n roll; at the time it bemused a lot of people who still associated Downwards with thunderous industrial techno, but it was a prophetic release, anticipating and contributing to a sub-cultural sea-change that has seen the worlds of tortured art-rock and dark-hearted electronic music collide and collude with a vigour not seen since the 1980s. Dva Damas's debut LP, Nightshade, expands on the Spaghetti Western vibe hinted at in the lurching guitar twangs of their debut EP, its Morricone-esque flourishes conjuring vast and blasted desert landscapes inhabited by a new breed of existential cowboy and cowgirl.