other titles...

Dana Gavanski

When It Comes

cd - £12.99 | Buy
Dana’s dream-pop-cum-psych-folk is a pot of tea for a burdened mind.
Dana Gavanski

Yesterday Is Gone

cd - £12.99 | Buy
A delicate, folk-strewn, lovelorn, indie-pop confessional from the Canadian singer-songwriter.

See also...

CATE LE BON

Pompeii

CD - £12.99 | Buy
*** we have atest pressto give away to one lucky winner so simply preorder the new album on any format for a chance to win & never fear, all existing preord...
Porridge Radio

Every Bad

cd - £9.99 | Buy
As many of us have followed them around for years, we predicted big things for these Brighton locals but we never suspected they had something quite this specia...
Beverly Glenn-Copeland

Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined

lp - £21.99 | Buy
a collection of songs from the now legendary album, re-worked and re-imagined by an assortment of creative kindred spirits.
rozi plain

Prize

*Signed* limited indies only clear lp - £22.99 | Buy
*Signed* Dinked 220 - hand numbered translucent "streetlamp orange" lp in alternate sleeve + wall planner (500 only) - £26.99
on her 5th album (& her 2nd dinked edition), rozi strips things back to their essence to reveal their innate beauty.
Late Slap

 

5060626467637

  1. How To Feel Uncomfortable
  2. Let Them Row
  3. Late Slap
  4. Ears Were Growing
  5. Singular Coincidence
  6. Song For Rachel
  7. Eye On Love
  8. Ribbon
  9. Dark Side
  10. Reiteration

Dana Gavanski

Late Slap

Full Time Hobby
  • limited red lp

    Released: 5th Apr 2024

    £23.99
    Buy
  • black lp

    Released: 5th Apr 2024

    £21.99
    Buy
  • cd

    Released: 5th Apr 2024

    £11.99
    Buy

Ever since 'Yesterday Is Gone' first swished into our ears, we've been firm Dana fans and let's just say that 'Late Slap', with its startling musical progression, brave new sonic palette, and infectious refrains, has only further embedded us deep within dugout of team Gavanski.

'Late Slap', Gavanski’s third album, gives voice to the highs and lows of the mindscape in all its joys and terrors, injecting some much needed playfulness into the process of writing about emotionally hard things.“The album holds together the seemingly disparate aspects of my character that I have sometimes tried to repress,” says Dana. “With this album I’m letting them into the room, celebrating them for all their strangeness a strangeness which I think we all, on some level, share.”


”In the writing of 'Late Slap', Gavanski swapped out the familiar for the new, training herself to use LogicPro rather than just her usual guitar-and-voice approach. If composing somewhat neo-Luddite anthems on a Macbook seems a little contradictory, well, that’s kind of the point: “21st century life is so full of contradictions and headfucks that it can be hard to do anything with conviction—you could cynic your way out of doing or believing anything.” Initially overwhelmed by its seemingly limitless possibilities, Dana began to create demos and collages of small sound worlds across various influences, at times orchestral pop, art rock and new wave, again embracing difference and variety. “Whenever I’m stuck in a certain way of working, it helps to try something new, to challenge myself in a different way. Like when you learn a new instrument: you’re excited by it and less concerned with perfection.”

Gavanski fleshed out the demos with her band before taking the album—and the band—to Mike Lindsay (Tunng, LUMP) at MESS, the producer’s studio in Margate. The five-piece, which includes Gavanski’s fellow co-producer James Howard (Rozi Plain, Alabaster dePlume), tracked the record over five days. “I knew Mike could help me find the range of sound I was looking for; he has an amazing attention to sonic detail and we’ve worked well together on previous records.” Lindsay acquired a Yamaha DX7 synth at Dana’s request just for the album, and they used it to conjure an atmosphere of digital warmth that recalls the Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s meditative masterpiece Keyboard Fantasies.

But the Gavanski mind-party has a varied playlist. ‘Ears Were Growing,’ for example, encapsulates the eighties zeal of Talking Heads or Klaus Nomi, pitching fantasy against reality through a playful lyric about negative self-talk, the domestic interior, and their way of creating a kind of Stockholm Syndrome equal parts comfort and fear. The line “take me to the cinema/ I want to inhabit the actress!” testifies to Dana’s appreciation for the theatrical and the cinematic. She cites the influence of golden age Hollywood star Gena Rowlands, whose portrayal of an aging theatre actor in Opening Night leads to a frightening loss of self and a dark, sobering transformation: “Gena manages to express so many feelings just through her face. She’s strikingly beautiful in a classic Hollywood way but she’s not scared to look silly and childish. She makes me laugh and cry at the same time—there’s something transformative in going over the top.

”Some tracks take a less in-your-face approach (it takes all sorts to make a memorable party). ‘Ribbon,’ a tender song about the recent loss of a childhood friend, looks at the world through the lens of grief, marveling at the way the familiar suddenly loses its meaning and shape: “To face the rays all saddled in silence/How do I rearrange my room/ the walls are a shell/That’s opened too soon/ I can’t manage it from here.” The gently propulsive ‘Song for Rachel’ approaches the same subject matter from another angle, finding release in the simple, straight-to-the-point chorus refrain of “Cause’ you’re gone/ it’s just that I’m lost/ and I don’t know how to feel.” Not knowing how to feel, Gavanski shows us, is as valid and important a feeling as any other.