Click here to watch Dani Bell and the Tarantist’s new music video “Mystery” via Glide Magazine

Dani Bell and the Tarantist is an American rock band based in San Diego, California, led by singer-songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Dani Bell. Inspired by the early days of Motown, Dani Bell and the Tarantist creates a modern style of dreamy psychedelic pop. The band records and tours as part of the Redwoods Music record label and musicians collective, which adapts Bell’s bedroom compositions into intimate songs with expansive arrangements.

With their sophomore record Wide Eyed, which is due out on January 18, 2019, Dani Bell and the Tarantist awake from the dreamy pop reveries that fueled their 2015 debut, Dark West, to contend with a present day that’s taken a greater emotional toll. While their previous effort lent the intimacy of Bell’s vulnerable vocals to romantic whispers, here they’re compelled to answer the shifting contexts of an unsettling world, offering turns of disenchantment, wariness and resilience.

For an artist who sings with vulnerability and introspection, Bell offers scarce hints of a persona through her performance with her band. On stage, the singer’s face is partly concealed by a feathered commedia dell’arte mask, which she procured in the Venice Republic. Her body reveals only a compulsive devotion to the music, the possessed dancing ecstasy of a tarantist. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Click here to listen to Xymox’s “Blind Hearts” (Club Mix) via The Big Takeover Magazine

Song Premiere: “Blind Hearts” (Club Mix) by Xymox
by Big Takeover Exclusives
Xymox – Photo Credit: Edmund Messerschmidt

Pylon Records is set to reissue the renowned, long-running Dutch act Xymox’s (AKA Clan of Xymox) newly remastered album Twist of Shadows. The double-vinyl set (including 5 bonus tracks) comes out on November 9th and the 2-CD set (including 10 bonus tracks in all) arrives on December 7th.

Children of the 1980s alternative music underground will be familiar with Clan of Xymox or the abbreviated form Xymox. The outfit’s spellbinding, but changeable sound is one of gothic vocals shrouded in mysterious synths/electronics-driven atmospherics.

In the U.S. especially, Twist of Shadows was a success, with “Obsession” charting on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart and that track and “Blind Hearts” making Billboard’s Club Play Chart. “Imagination” with Anka Wolbert on lead vocals, brought the act mainstream attention, charting at #85 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and generating Top 40 radio airplay and MTV video rotation.

While Xymox’s 1989 album Twist of Shadows isn’t exactly industrial in its sound, the BPMs run mid-tempo and are totally danceable in a New Order-type way. The expanded remastered double vinyl release includes the club hits “Obsession” and “Blind Hearts,” along with several rare 12” mixes and B-sides.

A couple of the tracks have string arrangements by famed producer Tony Visconti, who was responsible for several of David Bowie’s landmark releases. The two LPs are housed in a gatefold jacket complete with lyrics, and the artwork was designed by Vaughan Oliver of 4AD fame. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE