Dare to Dance Darkly – Deathwish
by J Campbell
Deathwish is a “Dark Dance” night held once a month every second Friday at Tracks in Denver. Tracks’ website bills Deathwish as a Goth and Industrial night, but after talking with producers Starr and Dave, it is really so much more. They both hesitate to describe Deathwish with limiting labels and have instead created the term Dark Dance to try to encompass what Deathwish really is. They promote hard-edge electronic, Industrial, and EBM-style music. The music is characterized by distorted vocals, hard beats, and it’s all electronic. Deathwish is more than just the music, however. They try to enhance the experience by making it more than just auditory. They spend hours creating the theme and designing the set. Their go-go dancers create costumes to match the theme. Often they bring in outside artists who paint during the night. Once they had a fashion designer come in to showcase his work during the show, and they even brought in a fire dancer. Dave and Starr are trying to show the connection between the arts and music. I had the chance to talk to Dave (owner of Vendetta Music) and Starr about Deathwish.
LMC: How did you come up with the term Dark Dance?
Dave: Goth/Industrial is almost like Classic Rock these days to young people. We’re trying to attract the younger crowd as well and we don’t play much actual Goth music, so we came up with Dark Dance to avoid the labels and limits of just Goth and Industrial.
Starr: We aren’t really playing just Industrial, it’s sort of dark electronic music and we wanted to define it so we came up with the Dark Dance label.
LMC: If you wanted to describe Deathwish to someone in a few sentences, what would you say?
Starr: We’re pushing the envelope of dark electronic music. We have a fun atmosphere. Friends gather and have a great time and support the new movement in the music. The club is gorgeous, beautiful light, the sound system is sick. Probably the second best in Denver. They have a real dance floor, too.
Dave: Industrial Dance music, you have to experience it to really grasp it. You can tell people all you want about it, but until you really see people dancing in a real club with a real sound system, you can’t really understand.
LMC: Anything else you’d like to share?
Dave: The original idea was to have live dance music, but after a while we dropped the live music and started doing themes to get people to come out for a Progressive Industrial music night, really just to have a great party. When we started we averaged 200 people. These days we get between 450 and 550. Two hundred is now a slow night.
Starr: The artists are learning how to construct music in a classical sense with music theory. It’s allowing Deathwish to deliver an experience similar to mainstream clubs but still maintaining the underground feel. We also do a lot of charities. We did a night to raise money for the tsunami victims in Japan and raised over $600 in one night, which we donated to the Red Cross. We always do some sort of food or toy drive in December and other charities throughout the year.
Deathwish was originally run by Russ (Charles Russell) and Dave. Russ worked at Tracks and was their ‘in’ to the very nice club. Most nights Tracks is a gay club and Deathwish is their only dark night. Russ left the night and a few years ago Starr signed up as one of the producers. Dave is in charge and Starr says she is kind of like the second in command and a resident DJ. They also have Gustavo Momtano, Leslie Mohler, and Cat on the team. Gustavo is the third resident DJ and Leslie is in charge of the dancers. Cat runs the decoration and construction crew. There’s a ton of prep work that goes into their night and the team works together to create an intense audio-visual experience for their fans.
Side note: I haven’t had the pleasure of going to Deathwish yet, but I did have a chance to talk with someone who attended the one in November. We shall call him “Innocent Bystander” (IB).
LMC: Tell me your impressions of Deathwish.
IB: I really enjoyed Deathwish. The people were welcoming and fun to be around.
LMC: What was the coolest thing there?
IB: I am not sure that I can nail down one thing to call the coolest thing. The DJs and the scenery were amazing, but so were the bartenders and the patrons.
LMC: What did you think about the detail that they went into to create Deathwish?
IB: I was very impressed with the amount of work that went into the decoration of the venue. The organizers went all out, sparing no details.
LMC: Any comments about the venue?
IB: The venue was one of the best that I have been to.
LMC: Would you recommend the experience to others?
IB: I would absolutely recommend this event to anyone interested in having a good time with great people. The music is great, the drinks are well made, and the people are friendly.
FaceBook.com/DeathWishDenver
FaceBook.com/VendettaMusic
FaceBook.com/profile.php?id=100001125223758&ref=ts
Category: Noco Music Scene
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
 |
 |
