A few months ago, my external hard drive died and took a ton of my music with it. Some, thankfully, I'd already stuck online or had copies of elsewhere. There was one 'band', though, that I thought I'd completely lost: an Earth/Godflesh influenced dirge rock project called desolater.
I wrote and recorded five tracks about the American dustbowl; specifically the 'Black Sunday' storm in April 1935. Strong winds whipped up dirt and dust from the farms of the panhandle region, creating apocalyptic 'black blizzards' that engulfed towns and even reached all the way to Washington.
I played all the guitar parts and programmed everything else (except the bass on the first track, which was played by my mate Andy Peat, whom I've been in a few bands with), as an experiment to see if I could make programmed bass and drums sound like live instruments. I think I was generally successful, although as the EP goes on you'll realise I started to chuck in more and more overt electronic/industrial sounds because I just cannot help myself.
Ideally, I'd have re-worked all the songs, particularly tracks 3 - 5, but the original audio files/stems are lost to the mists of time, so here they are in their technically finished glory. I am, however, 99% chuffed with how the first two tracks sound.
The EP's below if you fancy a listen and if you like it enough, it's free to download!
