- With each new release for Downwards (Wet Vision being their third so far), Dva Damas venture further from their roots in guitars and horror punk and deeper into electronics and coldwave. The 45 Grave-style twang that previously anchored the Los Angeles outfit's sound has been reduced to the sparest of ornamentation. On the title track, as well as its turbid counterpart, "Wet Vision Pt II," it's nothing more than an eerily plucked string or two that, like apparitions floating across your periphery, dissolve as swiftly as they've been noticed. A similar dissolution marks the changing role of singer Taylor Burch. Once corporeal and immediate, her deep tenor now alternates between vaporous echo and clipped consonants.
This streamlining opens up the space needed for the group's increasingly complex rhythms. Both "On Your Heels" and "Theme For Silence" boast novel schemes of throbs, gurgles, hisses and hefty low-end. A striking mesh of creeping unease and Kraftwerk-style atmospheres (think Radioactivity), the latter is the group's most refined production to date. All in all, Wet Vision is a very cool 12-inch that casts Dva Damas as a kind of black mascara-stained Glass Candy for LA's thriving industrial/goth scene.
TracklistA1 Wet Vision
A2 Theme For Silence
B1 Wet Vision Pt II
B2 On Your Heels