Some places have a darkness to them that seems obviously historically rooted. New England has several of the oldest Western settlements in North America. They were founded by religious maniacs. It’s cold, dark, and inhospitable. It’s the birthplace of Lizzie Borden, Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, and Steven King. There have been periods of uneasy alliance with the natives interspersed with periods of outright war. It’s the home of the Salem witch hunts and the molasses flood, Whitey Bulger and the Tsarnaev brothers. It’s the place from which the planes took off on 9/11. The fact that a certain segment of our population is fixated with the dark and gloomy aspects of existence makes sense.

Then, there are places like Los Angeles. Sunny, plastic, prefab Los Angeles. Relatively new and unspoiled compared to the East Coast, LA is famous for its non-native palm trees and its glamorous residents. For some inexplicable reason, the city has always been a breeding ground for dark, gloomy, none-more-goth artists, from Luciferian experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger to deranged, rambling folksinger/cult leader Charles Manson to its ever-expanding circle of contemporary post-techno explorers like Silent Servant, Tropic of Cancer, and the subject of this review, DVA Damas.

On Wet Vision, DVA Damas burnish down the ’80s-indebted electronic post-punk of their earlier releases to its most minimal and effective form to date. Shards of reverby electric guitar are employed with judicious caution in what is otherwise a delay-soaked rhythmic soundscape. These simple, ringing guitar notes are plucked more like an additional percussive element than a melodic one. Singer Taylor Burch’s voice is similarly pared down, sounding detached and icy where once she sounded sultry and immediate. This editorial spirit serves the duo well. Like wine distilled into a fine cognac, once the excess is boiled off what remains is decadent, heady and intoxicating.

Wet Vision is limited to 300 copies and can be ordered exclusively from Mount Analog.