Semi-transparent turquoise vinyl. Cover art with gold highlighting.
Comes with a full colour booklet taking the listener on a journey through the visual world of The Black Hours, inspired by a medieval devotional 'book of hours' of the same name.
The lyrics are integrated into the marking of the liturgical hours for prayers from from dusk to dawn and through the dark of night. Alongside this, the band are visually portrayed in exquisitely crafted 3D 'miniatures' - a series of 3 images showing DSCM pre-pandemic, during lockdown, and finally in the strange and unsettling world we currently find ourselves in.
Full colour, with detailed mixed media artwork (hand-drawings, collage and photography) throughout, printed on matt finish thick paper. Luxury 'softened leather-feel' textured cover. 12 pages.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Black Hours
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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Purchasable with gift card
£18GBP
Streaming + Download
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
£7GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Buy Dead Space Chamber Music's haunting Black Hours LP (+booklet) and get either Kinlaw Franco Franco's Mega Dopo Mega LP or the Bad Tracking LP for only £9 extra.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Black Hours
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
THE BLACK HOURS
The second studio album by Dead Space Chamber Music, digs deep into the unsettling and disorienting experiences of the last year or so, confronting and embodying many emotions — from boldly visceral to achingly tender, with a very human thread running through the whole work. The songs themselves show the breadth of the group’s scope in terms of influences and approaches — material that is hundreds of years old being brought to (new) life, with soul-stirring and tender melodies rising to dramatic doom-laden highs via avant-garde and experimental techniques.
The album is a collection of 7 interlinked songs, each heralded by the tolling of a bell to mark the ‘hour’. They were created sequentially: the first song was created pre-lockdown, the last song was created post-lockdown, and the 5 in between were recorded in August 2020 at The Premises Studios, London, by the ‘fifth member’, Tom Berry, who recorded their OEIRA EP while still a student in 2018 and who they have worked with ever since. He understands how the group like to record — all together in a live room, where they can see and directly respond to each other — something important for the semi-improvised sections of their music. He also contributed creatively to the final result, for example reamping the cello and guitar through vintage amps and expertly applying analogue delay to the bowed cymbal on Ion.
The Black Hours was begun in late 2019 and was completed mid-way through 2021. The way that the album carried the band through the strange journey of the pandemic resonates with the theme and visuals of the album. The entire record is a reference to a medieval illuminated manuscript of the same name, a unique and intimate book of prayers to mark The Liturgy of the Hours, or The Office of the Dead — with prayers to mark the hours from morning to evening and all through the night. Created between 1460 and 1475, The Black Hours is hand-scribed on black vellum with real gold, silver, and at the time more valuable than either of these — turquoise pigment. The idea of marking time, especially dark times, this way appealed to the group — the focused contemplation of prayer being akin to the focus of creating and crafting music.
credits
released April 1, 2022
Line up
Tom Bush: Guitars, Sampler
Katie Murt: Drums, Percussion
Liz Paxton: Cello
Ellen Southern: Voice, Percussion, Bowed & Plucked Psaltery
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Tom Berry at The Premises Studio, London.
Vinyl mastering by Beau Thomas at Ten Eight Seven Mastering, pressed at The Vinyl Factory, London.
Album artwork by Ellen Southern, design by Katie Murt.
Album photography by Katie Murt Photography
Band portraits by Katie Murt Photography.
supported by 6 fans who also own “The Black Hours”
giro days pummelling 12 minutes monster grinder is a gem a perfect soundtrack to the time honoured tradition of going completely bonkers for one day a fortnight. that refrain of sex death sex death is tied to the title for me..the little death.sex ...and life ..measured in giros.or.lives ,measured in bi weekly trips to the hole in the wall at midnight .....a triumph of a record... probably as good as just say no..but I'm a sucker for a pair of drummers.GNOD ON christopherogley
Murky and mysterious sounds from Jonquera, depicting, “a feudal struggle between a heretic woman & a priest in the small town of Charlieu.” Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 13, 2020
