She waits in the dark for me
She can see inside my dreams
The more I give the more she takes
I don’t want to be awake
In the winter of 2019, lifelong San Antonio musician CJ Duron (The Sandworms) needed a creative outlet as he emerged from the bleakest trenches of personal tragedy. His grief transmuted into a morose sound, which became the impetus for his newest darkwave project, In A Darkened Room. With the addition of longtime friends and co-conspirators, bassist Svia Svenlava (Shadow Fashion, The Sandworms,) and synth player, Kandi Keys (Love/Hate Affair,) the band began meeting in Duron’s dimly-lit basement studio. Almost immediately, the world around them changed into an even darker and more dangerous place as the pandemic raged across Texas, devastating the music and performance industries. They found themselves cocooned together in that basement, exorcising their demons through music.
Pulling from diverse influences, including David Bowie, Killing Joke, and The Cure, Duron’s weighty guitar riffs and sonorous baritone vibrate your ribcage with dark and dreary melancholia. (Imagine if Edgar Allan Poe had decided to listen to a lot of Lebanon Hanover.)
“Sleep Again is a story about my experiences with night terrors and sleep paralysis,” says Duron. “I had a string of nightmares that featured a recurring female entity that seemingly had fun tormenting me over a series of days causing me to question what was real and what wasn’t. Feeling and hearing sensations without the ability to move was a surreal experience.”
The video is illustrated with the DIY eerie clip directed by Darkened Room Productions. Bringing to mind filmmaker Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, the video depicts the creepy sleep paralysis demon and the havoc she hath wrought.
Watch below:
In A Darkened Room has had the privilege of playing with goth rock legends Christian Death, 80s icons Gene Loves Jezebel and When In Rome, as well as post-punk, new wave contemporaries, Actors, and Twin Tribes. They are eager to tour with their eight-song debut album.
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