Richard H Kirk Dasein

1st solo album in 5 years, the album was constructed at Western Works, Sheffield,
over a three-year period. Work began with recording on midi and analogue
synthesisers before guitar and vocals (Kirk's first use of vocals in 10 years) were
added. Kirk explains, "A lot of time was spent on post-production, editing and then
living with the material and I think it benefited from stepping back and then revisiting
after doing other things." Although not an overtly political album, it's hard not to hear
a reaction to recent years' world events in the overwhelming urgency of "Nuclear
Cloud" or "20 Block Lockdown" or in "New Lucifer / The Truth Is Bad". When
questioned Kirk admits, "It's not really a political album, but over recent years - during
the recording - all manner of horrorshow events have cropped up and now we seem
to be in a rerun of the Cold War with Russia back as the Bogeyman." The album's
title, "Dasein" (a German word meaning "being there" or "presence", often translated
into English as "existence"), is a fundamental concept in existentialism. Kirk explains
"culture succumbs to nostalgia in much the same way that an individual looks back
wistfully to adolescence or childhood - the nostalgia is partly for a time when he or
she wasn't nostalgic, just lived purely in the now." In 2014, during the recording
period, Kirk began work on Cabaret Voltaire live and so the two projects coexisted in
tandem.
TRACKLISTIN