Santa Fe-based duo GO DARK are a futuristic genre-blurring duo who fuse abrasive electronic textures, with snippets of melodies and hip-hop cut-ups, it’s a sound that’s both exciting and bracing. Lead vocalist Ashley ‘Crash’ Gallegos possess a warrior spirit that doesn’t just embody feminism but smashes inequality and boundaries, speaking to the bewildering confusion and sickness of the modern world. “Go Dark is music for women of my kind, the striving maniac animal,” says Crash, “bitches that wear skirts and knives who can go into the woods and track things.” Dose adds: “A lot of music is meant to take you to a place you’d rather be, but this is meant to be a score for the way it is.”
‘Violetest Red’ was the first single to be taken from Go Dark’s Neon Young LP which is due for release on 18th January 2019 via Bella Union. A rolling potpourri of sounds from crunchy industrial electro-pop to simmering hip-hop and fragments of melody – imagine a future where The Go! Team are jamming with Peaches and you might get somewhere to envisaging their vibrant, exciting genre-blurring sound.
Second single ‘NUMB’ further strips back the layers on their futuristic sound that blurs the lines between electronica and hip-hop music, today we premiere the Gold Panda remix.
Go Dark create 21st-century cyberpunk that touches on the sickness of modern life, the enigmatic duo of Ashley ‘Crash’ Gallegos and Adam ‘Doseone’ Drucker are bound by an incommunicable sense of purpose, the two merging completely on scorched, imaginative debut album Neon Young.
Read a Q&A with the duo below to get to know them better below:
Hi Go Dark, how are you today?
CRASH:
I’m exhaustedly delirious from getting out of a blizzard in Chicago, home visiting family then returned to the high desert with no blizzards, less people, and more mountains.
dose:
Good, digging in on WINTER CAVE SELF, making lots of music all hours of the day…
How did you meet?
CRASH:
We met on the streets of downtown Oakland out side of a bar I was working at. Dose was walking to teach his Freestyle Rap Class and I was being shown how to close a bar patio.
dose: Rest is history…
When did you get your alter ego names?!
CRASH:
People have always called me Ash, and that became Crash because of my reckless dumbass behaviour. Then that name started to suite me while living in Oakland, our director homie Zack Kasten sorta made it stick.
dose:
Ah man, I was 15 and a Graf Writer in Philly, doseone was my Tag, I started freestyling a year later, and got stuck with it;)
What was the first thing you released?
CRASH:
BITCHSWORD (bitch-sword)
dose: It was an EP and a video game
What was the first composition you felt truly happy with?
CRASH: I’ve always been happy w everything we initially make.
dose: For me, it was the first DEMO Crash gave me, which later turned into “D&D” on “BrightWild”. It was some Wurli and her snapping her teeth for a snare and singing, been a pleasure ever since.
You talk about Go Dark being music for ‘bitches that wear skirts and knives who can go into the woods and track things.” Do your songs reflect that sense of trying to make sense of the world, self-empowerment and flipping gender roles?!
CRASH:
That just is the world I choose to partake in, the world that I exist in with myself, and the world I come from. The underground worlds exists like this with me, a world w out sexism, racism, genderless, real freedom. Not just capitalism, more punk happiness, friendship, love, handmade things, self-sufficiency and truly doing for one another. So yeah it is letting the world know, the main stream world, that the unmarked feral fluid femme, non-binary underground youth, is alive and living well on their own, together.
You also said: “A lot of music is meant to take you to a place you’d rather be, but this is meant to be a score for the way it is.” Is your music about expressing how you feel about the insanity of the world??
CRASH: Yes, it’s our natural reaction to an ever crazy world.
dose: Yeah, for me music is my punching bag and precious painting, so as the world crazes me, I let it come out in the music as therapy… sometimes it sounds brutal, other times it sounds beautiful to do so.
Which artists work do you admire?
Broadcast, ESG, PTAF, Princess Nokia, Le Butcherettes, Little Dragon, Tune-Yards, Kate Bush, Lola Belatrañ, Gold Panda, Curtis Mayfield, SOPHIE, F.Y.P., Peter Gabriel, Shabazz Palaces, Fennesz, BBD, the Police, Spark Master Tape, Ms.Badu…
I read that Dose work on video game scores like Gang Beats, Enter The Gungeon, what did you learn from this process to bring to Go Dark?
dose:
I do indeed! Indie Video Games has been a big old PRODUCTION pasture for me to play and find my self in as a producer. At the same time, I have been working with CRASH to find the GO DARK sound. I feel very me and free in both realms so it made the transition from Rapper to Producer a challenging and joyous affair.
There’s a crunching electronic visceral patchwork balanced with a melodic humanity to your work, it reminds me somewhat of the electroclash period of the early 2000s, are you a fan of this era?!
dose: I dig some electroclash for sure…our feels are more based on 808 abuse meets R&B meets ESG. While our songs are super drum driven, we still like to lean on melody as much as distortion. But in general yes, we humbly follow in the footsteps of all edgy music making female energy ever!
Where did you record Neon Young and over what period of time?
CRASH: In an Oakland apartment across 2016 – 17. Protests out the front windows, always hitting record beside ground zero Oakland activism.
Tell us about the track Numb and how the remix by Gold Bear happened!?
CRASH: The original track is about longing for a perfect numb. Something that can numb all the bad is by default a good thing. What you don’t feel makes you stronger.
dose: GOLD PANDA is one of our favoritest musicians, artists and people. We have been lovingly sending him our music since the first EP. I can’t even lie, his RMX blew my mind, as does all his composition. Preserving emotion and feels in electronic music is no easy task, and Dr.Panda does it for me every time. His music makes me want to go make music
Will you be touring your upcoming record? What’s a Go Dark show like?
CRASH: A GD show is a primal, feral femme freak out fueled by my forever punk energy, and 808 BASS. You won’t remember the show bc I looked cute or some bullshit, you’ll remember the show bc I grab, and scream and sing at you.
http://gogogodark.com/
