ANDREAS DAVIDS – THE INABILITY TO BE HAPPY

INNER DEMONS RECORDS – NEW BATCH 1/2024

The most recent batch of Inner Demons Records from Florida hit the office, and it’s massive (!!!) again. There are no less than 19 new releases by well-known and lesser-known artists, and in these coming few weeks, I’ll be looking at some of them. Or all of them, I don’t know yet. As I’ve written several Weeklies before, Inner Demons Records is the label of Dan Fox, who we know from projects Loss (Spectre Records / ant-zen), Fail, If and several other lesser-known but just as exciting projects. The thought behind the label is that everything goes style-wise as long as your heart is in the right spot. The rules you receive are clear (‘tRUMP SYMPATHIZERS, CONSPIRACY THEORISTS AND OTHER CULT MEMBERS NEED NOT APPLY’); for the rest, it’s art. Just art. Sounds. Noise. Rhythm. Walls. Anything …

3″CDr, https://innerdemonsrecords.bandcamp.com/

The first release I’m playing is Andres Davids’ “The Inability to be Happy.” Andreas, who some of you know from his main project, XOTOX, does stuff here that wouldn’t really fit the XOTOX moniker. The sounds he releases under his own name are way more experimental in nature and definitely less danceable, so please don’t see this as an XOTOX side project. See it as a different side of the human Andreas Davids.

Even though the 20-minute track contains rhythm, droney layers, minimal melodies and some weird-ass noises of unknown origin (it’s not guitar, is it?), it’s hard to pinpoint the style. It’s not ambient as we know it, it’s not noise, it’s weird and experimental, and it has a beautiful flow. At moments, it gets a bit of a dubby feeling, which—even though I don’t really like dub—I actually like.

I will write some words I hope Andreas will forgive me for writing down, but if “The Inability to be Happy” is the result of an unhappy Andreas, then making music like this would be a perfect form of therapy because listening to the result everyone would become happy, even Andreas. So, with that in mind, I can only come up with a paradoxal emotional charge of this release. Well done my friend!