The Doomed Bird Of Providence Burrowed Into The Soft Sky

Burrowed into the Soft Sky is the 3rd album by The Doomed Bird of Providence following the acclaimed Will Ever Pray (2011) and Blind Mouths Eat (2013). They have continued to mine the deep dark vein of Australian colonial history but have on this occasion discarded Mark Kluzek's vocals (narrating stories over a sequence of songs) in favour of two twenty minute instrumentals that continue Kluzek's obsessive and singular foray into early colonial history while being a significant departure in terms of genre and approach.
The underlying themes for each track are contrasting yet tie together via their historical context; a period where indigenous Australian belief systems and day-to-day lives were irrevocably assaulted. The song Burrowed into the Soft Sky is based on a passage from Patrick White's novel Voss. The book is very loosely based on the final (and fatal) journey through the northern regions of Australia by German explorer Ludwig Leichardt. Kluzek took a passage from the book where a comet passes over and Voss, his team and a tribe of Australian Aboriginals engage with and interpret the experience until it is 'burrowed into the soft sky'. The Blood Dimmed Tide is Loosed takes a significantly darker turn shining a light on a pattern of atrocity that took place in the north east of Australia at a time where a dynamic of back and forth, invariably initiated by colonists, took place and culminating in a “dispersal” of a tribe, “by shooting them down – men, women and children, the object being to destroy as many as possible.” This is based on accounts of such events in the book Exclusion, exploitation and extermination : race relations in colonial Queensland (Raymond Evans, Kay Saunders, Kathryn Cronin). Attacks of this nature on tribes were commonplace.