Stuart Argabright’s Black Rain waited 18 years to give us “Protoplasm.” It’s one of four tracks from the small collection of new material for Blackest Ever Black released last fall, which are taken back into a room similar to the final sequence in Space Odyssey and subsequently heightened. Originally subdued by its live recording, the album version of “Protoplasm” sits agitated, pushing or judging here and there. Argabright’s noted heavy sci-fi influences, as well as Black Rain’s early ties with both Keanu Reeve’s Johnny Mnemonic and the audiobook of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, afflux the imagery of Dark Pool, and it’s a place I want 1980 Ridley Scott to direct.
Black Rain, originally a two-piece industrial death metal band and now a solo endeavor with the absence of Japanese composer Shinichi Shimokawa, laid dormant until the 2012 Blackest Ever Black release of Now I’m Just A Number, featuring seven tracks the duo made in the mid-1990s around the time Nanarchy came out — each with very different sounds attached to them. Though for Argabright, managing to hover over, not with, genres has always been a tool for growth. From New York No Wave (Ike Yard, who reformed in 2007), to futurist hip-hop (Death Comet Crew with Michael Diekmann and the aforementioned Shinichi Shimokawa), to too-hot-for-TV synthpop (Dominatrix - “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight”), Argabright is exactly where he wants to be: poolside.
Grab Dark Pool on vinyl or CD along with this dope tee to sit around in while waiting for Blackest Ever Black’s release of an expanded reissue of Now I’m Just A Number in 2015.
• Black Rain: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-rain/273595259331645
• Blackest Ever Black: http://blackesteverblack.com