The voice of Athan Maroulis will always be linked to the seminal Los Angeles based trio Spahn Ranch, a band that pounded the ’90s Industrial scene with a daring mix of electro-flavored Synth Pop fused with a menacing pall of atmospheric Goth. To this day, a number of Spahn Ranch songs like “Vortex” and “Heretic’s Fork” still pack dark dance floors around the globe. In the aftermath of Spahn Ranch, Athan returned to his native New York City where he took a decade-long break from performing, and instead produced countless reissues of 1930s and 1940s jazz and blues music while working behind the scenes advising a number of varied Darkwave bands. In those years, Athan occasionally appeared as a guest on albums by Razed in Black and Black Tape for a Blue Girl. He joined the latter officially in 2009, cutting an album while also completing tours both here and abroad, highlighted by a packed show at the Leipzig Opera House during the 2011 Wave-Gotik-Treffen Festival.
While on hiatus from Black Tape, Athan conceptualized NOIR as a project where his Industrial and Gothic past would walk the wire between retro and futuristic sounds, brought into a moody electronic present by synth-laced hooks meshed with elements of dance, dark ambient and touches of glitch-induced EBM. The result is Darkly Near, an album influenced by an idealized black-and-white perception of New York City, where yesteryear’s views of tomorrow are pressed against the machinery of today. Lyrically, Darkly Near is an album of endings, a montage that travels through a dreamy death trip of sensuality littered with faded film stars, Rod Serling scripts, Weegee snapshots, con artists, replicants, and the layered recollections of a solitary man waiting for a train.
Released on the heels of 2012’s successful digital single “My Dear” (that featured an exclusive Assemblage 23 remix), NOIR’s mature yet strikingly refreshing Darkly Near album will be supported by a select string of exclusive live dates.
