Following the success of recent singles "Sometime", "Doused" , and "How Long Have You Known?" (All three earned Best New Track from Pitchfork) you may be asking yourself, what kind of drugs do I need to take to make music that good? Is it really that magical ratio of one part THC and two parts MDMA? Well, the music video for "How Long Have You Known?" intricately details the making of that special drug. Just don't try this at home kiddos. Watch the Cole play mad scientist in YouTube spotlight video for "How Long Have You Known?" here.
Recently inked to the uber-reliable Captured Tracks imprint, DIIV created instant vibrations in the blog-world with their impressionistic debut "Sometime"; finding it's way onto the esteemed pages of Pitchfork and Altered Zones a mere matter of weeks after the group's formation.
Enlisting the aid of NYC indie-scene-luminary, Devin Ruben Perez, former Smith Westerns drummer Colby Hewitt, and Mr. Smith's childhood friend Andrew Bailey, DIIV craft a sound that is at once familial and frost-bitten. Indebted to classic kraut, dreamy Creation-records psychedelia, and the primitive-crunch of late-80's Seattle, the band walk a divisive yet perfectly fused patch of classic-underground influence.
One part THC and two parts MDMA; the first offering from DIIV chemically fuses the reminiscent with the half-remembered building a musical world out of old-air and new breeze. These are songs that remind us of love in all it's earthly perfections and perversions.
A lot of DIIV's magnetism was birthed in the process Mr. Smith went through to discover these initial compositions. After returning from a US tour with Beach Fossils, Cole made a bold creative choice, settling into the window-facing corner of a painter's studio in Bushwick, sans running water, holing up to craft his music.
In this AC-less wooden room, throughout the thick of the summer, Cole surrounded himself with cassettes and LP's, the likes of Lucinda Williams, Arthur Russell, Faust, Nirvana, and Jandek; writings of N. Scott Momaday, James Welsh, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, and James Baldwin; and dreams of aliens, affection, spirits, and the distant natural world (as he imagined it from his window facing the Morgan L train).
The resulting music is as cavernous as it is enveloping, asking you to get lost in it's tangles in an era that demands your attention be focused into 140 characters.
Since that fateful summer, the band have waged a full throttle attack on the nation's venues, where the mellow, sometimes melancholic vibes of those early transmissions morph into a manic, crashing thing, providing an apt preview of DIIV's debut LP Oshin due on Captured Tracks on June 26th.
DIIV has also just announced new tour dates including NXNE and their record release show in Brooklyn. A rotating cast of characters including Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Killer Mike, Frankie Rose, Spectrals, Grimes, and Wild Nothing are accompanying DIIV on various tour dates. Check out all the stops below and make sure to get off the couch when they come through your town!
Watch - "How Long Have You Known?":
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