Black Wing announces sophomore record, “No Moon”, out December 11th on The Flenser

Dan Barrett – the man behind Have A Nice Life, Giles Corey, and Enemies List Home Recordings – has unveiled details for his sophomore album as the electronic project Black Wing. To be released on December 11th via The Flenser, No Moon is a gorgeous chillwave/post-punk record with nine bleak yet blissful songs and is a fitting close out to the year 2020. Written over the course of the last few years, with about half of the songs penned over the last six months (mostly due to pandemic “free time”), No Moon is a heart-wrenchingly honest outpour of emotion. Throughout the writing process, Barrett was having recurring dreams and felt a strange sense of timelessness – that, combined with quarantine is what he simply describes as a “weird experience”. Barrett explains, “Quarantine was profoundly isolating. With writing this record, more than anything I just wanted to prove to myself that I could make something out of it. That ended up being a lot of songs about feeling isolated, a lot of ‘trapped in my own head’ moments. I think that was a lot of people’s experience as well.”

Barrett formed Black Wing in the mid-2010’s as an opposite to his project Giles Corey; where Giles started as ‘only acoustic instruments allowed,’ Black Wing started with only digital instruments. In 2015, Black Wing released its first proper full length, …Is Doomed, which arose after some heart problems that Barrett discovered he had. But this time around, Barrett was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which led to “…incredibly disrupted sleep (and potentially some of the semi-lucid dreaming I experienced),” he says.

Much like …Is Doomed, No Moon bubbles with electronica and indie-pop with earworm melodies and affecting lyrics. But No Moon is a transitional change from Black Wing’s debut; the songs here are a bit more experimental and there’s a significantly wider emotional range to them. The lyrics are haunting and personal and resonate deeply with the listener, and the imagery in the album’s artwork is from a recurring series of dreams that Barrett had when the pandemic started (same with the writing inside the packaging).

The nine new tracks on No Moon are gloomy yet glorious, heavy while ambient, overwhelming yet alluring, and offer an earnest and honest look into ones self during such a troubling and confusing year — something we all can relate to. Look for No Moon to be available on December 11th from The Flenser and pre-order the album here. More new songs will be revealed soon.