Damien Dubrovnik Great Many Arrows

Great Many Arrows' is the 6th studio album from Damien Dubrovnik, the Danish duo
of Loke Rahbek and Christian Stadsgaard. It is also the 200th release on their Posh
Isolation label, marking 8 years for both the label and project. The label's inception
came with Damien Dubrovnik's debut album, and since then the two have been
inseparable. Without Damien Dubrovnik there would most likely have been no Posh
Isolation, and vice versa.'Great Many Arrows' is undoubtedly a high point in the varied
discographies of both Rahbek and Stadsgaard. It is the most realized Damien
Dubrovnik recording to date, and a standout in Posh Isolation's troves.As a record,
'Great Many Arrows' manages to translate the intensity of the duo's often
unrestrained live shows in to carefully crafted studio productions. Unlike the pair's
earlier and largely electronic recordings, the compositions on 'Great Many Arrows'
set organs, cellos, violas, wind and other acoustic instruments against the backdrop of
an electronic landscape.The new toolset is as apparent on the surface as it is in the
enclosed detail, taking the project further from its noise roots than it has ever been.
This is not to say that Rahbek and Stadsgaard have traded ferocity for formal
constraint. It is rather the opposite. While 'Great Many Arrows' is certainly the pair's
most 'musical' work to date, its veneer of accessibility might also make it their most
terrifying.The strength of the recording lies here in the interaction between the
melodic, acoustic instrumentation and the bulldozing electronics. Moments of beauty
and light are transfigured into utter chaos and rage, the mesmerising change an
expression of the equal and opposite form's natural sway as it beckons and slips
between its own passing.'Great Many Arrows' takes its name from a historic archery
competition in Kyoto, Japan, in which archers would shoot as many arrows as possible
for a 24 hour period. On April 26, 1686, Wasa Daihachiro from Kishu successfully
shot 8,133 out of 13,053 arrows, averaging 544 arrows an hour, or 9 arrows a minute,
becoming the record holder.