Keith Rankin discusses death's dynamic shroud's evolution on new album Darklife.
A deep dive into the creative process behind one of the most mind-bending electronic albums of last year.
artwork by Judii Hernandez.
death's dynamic shroud has been making waves in plunderphonic and alternative electronic music scenes for almost a decade, effortlessly shape-shifting and evolving their sound. The trio has accumulated quite a back catalog with a handful of mainline albums and numerous mixtape projects. Even so, they've recently experienced a new wave of popularity, partly brought about by the critically acclaimed Faith in Persona, an album I loved and was able to discuss with Keith Rankin of dds last year. Following this release, the group signed with music label 100% Electronica and produced 2022's Darklife -- an album that feels like the culmination of much of the group's past work, presented in a variety of stylings that lean on the poppier side of dds's sound. Darklife is a cinematic experience, bouncing back and forth between glitchy vocals, driving synths, and orchestral swells. There are more live vocals and instrumentation than on previous projects, and the big drum sounds often give the record an 80s tint.
The album translates the experience of watching a blockbuster movie into an auditory odyssey. The opener, “Stay,” feels like it's floating in outer space and, complete with a beautiful piano movement at its conclusion, could easily be played over the opening sequence in a feature film. There are many left-field bangers housed within Darklife. Synths drive momentum on tracks such as “Messe de E-102” and “Light Left the Garden.” The former features big guitars and a dancey climax, while the latter contains some wild vocal editing and 80's leaning drums. More 80s-inspired cuts include “Before I Cool Off” and “I Just Wanted To Know Love,” both of which remind me ever so slightly of Christmas. Some other bangers include “Fade Persona,” “Fall For Me,” and “Judgement Bolt,” all crazy tracks that contain glitchy vocals, driving rhythms, and some very progressive song structures. The album is an insane roller coaster, and you should honestly check out the whole thing. Though the songs vary stylistically, it's all the same movie. I got the chance to speak with Keith Rankin to get an inside perspective on Darklife, and you can read our conversation below.
David Feigelson: This is the first project that the three members of death’s dynamic shroud have worked on together in a number of years. I’m curious what the collaborative process is like and how it might’ve changed this time around as compared to previous projects.
Keith Rankin: Well, we worked on it for over a year. We got together in person to do the first recording session literally when the mixtape club started. It was also during the election, and I remember stressing about if Trump was going to get elected again, checking my phone at like 4AM. Like holy shit, this situation sucks. We actually did a live stream that night too, just talking to people on Twitch. I remember when that started though I was just like I can’t do this, my mind is too focused on Trump.
DF: Yeah, that’s a hard night to focus on anything else.
KR: Yeah, but then we got into it and it was okay. Working on the music and being wrapped up in our own bubble helped me not put my mind in another place. But the process was basically just we all sat at a computer, at James’s place in Philadelphia. He had this really shitty chair. I can’t even believe we used this chair. It was killing our backs. It was like a plastic, high chair type of thing. So one person would kind of take the helm and just work on a track, and the other two would kind of be buzzing around behind with ideas, like “let me get in there.” We’d kind of just trade off when we ran out of steam, even a little bit, and it was nice to step back and think while the next person sat down and started going at it. The bulk of the recording was done like that, which is so fun, that process is amazing. We also did a bunch of recording remotely, passing files back and forth, which is less fun.
DF: When you’re working together, does anyone ever do something that everyone else doesn’t think is working? Or are you usually all on the same page?
KR: Very seldom. It was more just letting things happen when we were in it and doing the critiquing later when we were sitting back listening to it. That’s another fun part of the process too — making something and talking about it. It’s almost like you didn’t make it. I enjoy that part, like planning out verbally what you’re gonna do.
DF: Okay, slightly switching gears. Darklife is very cinematic and orchestral, and often in different passages I felt like it could be a score in a movie. I was wondering what went into shifting in that direction.
KR: Well, basically before we started recording, we brought in a sound palette. For my part, I brought a bunch of ‘impact sounds,’ and you know like movie trailers use that stuff non-stop. I think James may have had a VST that kind of had that rumbling, drum ‘trailer’ sound. Also I was really feeling things like the Tekken 7 soundtrack or the Final Fantasy 7 Remake soundtrack, which Tech was also obsessed with. Basically a lot of new video game soundtracks. I think one of the first songs we did was “Judgement Bolt,” and it kind of set the tone for what the sound palette was going to be. It was almost like a flip of EDM trailer music cliches. This is something that I think has maybe gone over some people’s heads. I feel like a lot of people hear the album and just hear EDM, or something like that, but in a way that some of those modern video games do, especially the ones I mentioned, it's taking that sound palette and applying it to different compositional practices. So yeah, it was kind of trying to take this, in some sense, loathed sound palette by many people, and putting our more idiosyncratic take on it.
DF: That makes sense. For something as eclectic of a sound palette to be pulling from as that, I think it’s impressive how cohesive the album can run. It does play to me like a movie, even though I don’t know exactly what each of the scenes are depicting. The intro opens up the world that the last song very nicely wraps up.
KR: Part of that is the sequencing. It’s definitely meant to be heard as a full album. I know a lot of people don’t listen to music like that now, but it’s kind of for people who do. If you don’t listen to it as a full thing, you haven’t really heard the music as intended. So the sequencing is making it have a flow, deciding where to place the songs that don’t have drums — the cooldown moments — and being hyper aware of how it will feel as a whole. We definitely thought about that a lot, especially towards the end, it’s kind of all we were thinking about.
DF: Thematically and lyrically this album feels denser than past dds projects. Was that an important consideration in sequencing, or was it mostly sonic? And jumping off of that, can you elaborate on what some of the intentions with the lyrics were?
KR: Yeah, it was definitely trying to pace the presence of the vocals. Tech and James both sing on the album, and then there’s the vocal chop stuff.
DF: Is it new for Tech and James to be singing on these projects?
KR: They’ve sung on a lot of the mixtape club stuff. They’ve had bits of singing on older albums, but it has never been quite as present and up front as it is here.
DF: Was that an active decision, as it feels like you kept with a slightly more poppy sound palette since Faith In Persona?
KR: I think it’s partially to rely less on samples. Also, for instance, Tech was really adamant about using old songs that we had made. Him and James had a bunch of old material under this project called Rebecca Peake, something they did years ago, where they would record a song a day for a year.
DF: Woah.
KR: Yeah haha it was a crazy project. So they just had this enormous pool of songs. Obviously some of them were really half baked, because you’re trying to make a song a day, but some of them were really interesting. Tech was feeling like these songs need to have a bigger platform, better production, and just be re-worked. So a few of the songs on the album were songs written for that, years ago, that we revamped, and some of the vocals came in through those too. I also suspect that James and Tech wanted to be able to sing live and have it more in that realm.
DF: And some of the guitar is live too right? That’s James?
KR: Yeah, yeah.
DF: Could you speak a bit about the lyrics and themes on the album?
KR: Well for the lyrics, that’s something that James and Tech could get more into, because they wrote all of them. Some of them were from those songs from years ago. James wrote lyrics and the guitar to “Where Does It Come From?,” which is one of the slower songs, and I know that one was pretty explicitly about when you’re in a new relationship and just falling for somebody. Like where does that feeling come from. It’s such a strong, intense, biological reaction, it almost seems otherworldly. It’s such a different experience from our status quo, day to day feelings. All of the sudden this crazy feeling enters into our body, and it’s like where is that coming from. That became a lyrical theme of the whole project. From my perspective, in contrast to the over the top music, the lyrics are a bit more humble, everyday experience stuff.
DF: There are a few quotes I pulled from Bandcamp. I don’t know who wrote this description about the project, but someone said that it talks about “love as a metaphor for our individual philosophies” and “examining love as a social construct, or as the fabric of the universe, or as not existing at all.” I really liked that, I was wondering if you could elaborate.
KR: During the recording session, I think in one night we had that conversation. Maybe it just came from talking about relationships, or however it came up, it was the question of, kind of what I just said, what is this biological imperative to feel this strongly for somebody else? We kind of loosely came to three ideologies about it. James is very much what you’d call a romantic. He really likes being in that state of butterflies, and maybe romanticizes that experience. Tech, at least at the time, was at the opposite end of that spectrum. Kind of like, when you feel that, it’s just a temporary biological delusion. A slightly more nihilistic approach, where it’s just a temporary biological thing you can’t read that much more into it. I can’t even really remember, but I was probably arguing for the middle ground or something. In our society, there’s a single word for love, and it tries to encompass this broad range of feelings. There’s just a lot of baggage attached to what you’re supposed to feel, what you’re supposed to do when you feel these things. Part of having those feelings is playing into the social perceptions about what you’re supposed to do and what you’re supposed to feel. So it’s kind of a mixture of these social norms about the feeling, mixed with these intense biological feelings.
DF: No, that’s really interesting.
KR: I don’t know the word for it, but we’re all kind of neurotic and like to overthink things. So sometimes when we’re hanging out, we’ll just start talking about bullshit like that. In that instance, it felt appropriate to condense that general line of questioning into a few sentence thing that can just be applied to the album.
DF: Okay, I only have a couple more real questions. Here’s a pretty specific one. To me, “Rare Angel” has felt more like Faith In Persona than any other song on Darklife, and I was wondering if it came from those sessions or if I’m just hearing things.
KR: So we all worked on the beginning portion of “Rare Angel,” but basically the second half was an old Giant Claw song that I never used. So yeah, I brought that in and kind of reworked it for Darklife. I feel like we all had a few songs or moments on the album that were very much our solo things, and that was definitely one of mine, that end section of “Rare Angel.” I think that’s probably where you’re feeling the Faith In Persona connection.
DF: That makes a lot of sense. Finally, in a lot of ways, this project Darkllife feels like a magnum opus or culmination of a lot of things that death’s dynamic shroud has worked on at different times. On Bandcamp it was also described as a new beginning for the group. I’m wondering, going forward, how this new project, the new label, you now being in the mixtape club, etc. what the future looks like for death’s dynamic shroud.
KR: Yeah it is interesting thinking about what we should do next. With Darklife, it definitely feels like it’s the thing that we’ve put the most of ourselves into. Kind of like what we were just saying about the end of “Rare Angel,” you have these moments that are very much uncut, unfiltered, my-Giant-Claw-sensibilities. Or like the song “Before I Cool Off” is totally James, that was one of his big moments, his sensibilities hardcore, his song. So in a way, it feels like Darklife is our most personal, but also, because of that, our most bizarre album. I don’t know, it’s kind of a weird blend of an album. So, basically, I wonder if we can hone that in and make something that still has all these elements but feels like more of a contained, singular album. But I don’t know, who knows. Can we really get together and rein it in like that? Maybe that would be less fun. But, yeah, we definitely will have to decide that, probably soon. Because we wanna keep putting stuff out and ride the wave while it’s there.
DF: Awesome. Honestly, that’s all the questions I have. Thank you so much again for talking, it’s really fun to get these kinds of insights into the process.
Keith: Yeah, absolutely.
edited by Vanessa Yelder.
artwork by Judii Hernandez.
photo by Christina Schank.
