Amen Dunes is coming to a close.
The project is led by Damon McMahon, a remarkable songwriter and deeply individual vocalist. Debut project ‘DIA’ landed back in 2009, with Amen Dunes then becoming a key part of the Sacred Bones firmament.
Latterly working with Sub Pop, Amen Dunes released his latest album ‘Death Jokes’ last year.
Now – sadly – it seems the project has come to an end. Sharing ‘Death Jokes II’ – a series of re-workings crafted alongside producer Craig Silvey – Damon McMahon has issued a statement, explaining that Amen Dunes is no more.
“This is the last chapter of the final volume,” McMahon writes. “Goodbye, I’ve barely said a word to you, but it’s always like that at parties—we never really see each other, we never say the things we should like to; in fact it’s the same everywhere in this life. Let’s hope that when we are dead things will be better arranged.”
Listen to ‘Death Jokes II’ below.
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CLASH spoke to Damon McMahon last year about the evolution of Amen Dunes, and he reflected:
Every single album I’ve done has been different. The first one was ‘DIA’ back in 2009. That channelled a very harsh, German influenced, hard psych kind of sound. I’d say ‘Love’ (2014) was the first more straighter sounding record, which had more of a jazz influence going on. And then ‘Freedom’ came, and for me that was a radical departure from all of my back catalogue and is still the real outlier. That was where I wanted to experiment with music I love from bands like Thin Lizzy, and other clean music with slick production. If anything, ‘Death Jokes’ sounds most like ‘DIA’. The aesthetics are different, but they both channel a similarly free spirit. So, the ethos at the heart of it has been the same.
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