Artist: Dordeduh
Label: Lupus Lounge / Prophecy Productions
Release: 2012
Length: 77:50
Rating: 4.7/5
Writing this, I feel genuinely intimidated. What a challenge it is to sit down and write about, or try to put into words, something so insubstantial, so obviously transcendent. Think about it – isn’t it absurd that people try to describe music at all? And yet we all do it, in all sorts of ways – but how? We learn theory, we dissect harmony, polyrhythms, vocal timbre and so on. We describe our reaction to certain parts and tell people to expect similar feelings. But what happens when those feelings are too abstract to describe? Some would give up on articulating them and fall back on adjectives like “emotional,” “spiritual,” “inexpressible” (music). Everyone knows the cliché that music is a universal language, but often it just isn’t: plenty of people don’t “get” free jazz, noise or death metal, and most can’t even describe what it’s like to listen to music. Intimidating? Definitely. But that’s no reason for me to stop writing.
Dar De Duh is a Romanian phrase that’s almost impossible to translate fully into English, but it means something like “gift of the spirit.” Dordeduh, meanwhile, roughly means “longing for the spirit.” Spirit? What does that even mean? What does spirit have to do with music? Is it tied to the spirit of music? Does it have anything to do with our everyday feelings? Or does it go beyond them?
Dordeduh are definitely an extremely obscure band, and most of you reading this right now are either fans of the band, fans of the leaders’ previous band Negura Bunget, or you stumbled onto this page by accident and have no idea what’s going on. So first, a few words on how the band came to be. Dordeduh were born a few years back after the partial breakup of the much better-known black metal band Negura Bunget. Two of its main songwriters left and formed Dordeduh. The first EP, Valea Omului, soon followed. Negura Bunget are probably best known for their album OM, a huge milestone for the scene and, for many listeners, the best atmospheric metal album of all time. OM was also the last album featuring both members who are now Dordeduh. That’s exactly why so many people were waiting impatiently for Dar De Duh, this band’s debut, which was supposed to be the legitimate successor to OM. Plenty of people had sky-high expectations, and then some… and they were exceeded.
I won’t get into the details of individual songs. The sound on the record isn’t recycled Negura; this is no “OM version 2.0.” But it sounds very familiar, and it definitely brings Negura to mind. That said, Dar De Duh isn’t as heavy as the Negura albums, not even compared to OM. It’s even a slight evolution from that one, and that’s where I’ll end the comparisons. These are two very different entities, and I never wanted to set them against each other. So I won’t be telling you which album I like more, either.
So if Dar De Duh is the “gift of the spirit,” what exactly does it do to the listener? What kind of emotional response can you expect when the music isn’t about that, but about the soul itself? Since I sadly don’t understand Romanian and the lyrics are nowhere to be found in translation, I have no clue what they’re singing about. So it’s hard for me to say anything in that direction.
Still, I do have a certain emotional response when I listen to Dar De Duh. And, to my own great surprise, I can actually describe it. The album itself is very teleological. It has a very clear purpose. Dar De Duh forces you to realize that you’re a part of the universe. After months of listening to the album and digging into the band’s background (interviews, biographies), I came to see that all 8 tracks are in perfect harmony, describing a kind of ideal for the life of every human being. If Dar De Duh were a living creature, it would be a deeply spiritual being wrestling with mysticism.
While listening, I get the feeling that the album is looking at us humans and expressing its disappointment. It doesn’t want us to spend millions of years in nihilism, to be unproductive, to fall short of our potential, to ignore the possibility of the evolution of the human mind. That makes Dar De Duh a great humanist.
So if I now tell you “ignore me and just listen to the album,” I’ll be admitting that I failed to describe Dar De Duh. And I think I actually did fail. I regret having to admit my defeat, and maybe the defeat of language as such, at expressing the ideas of the album. Sure, it’s music, and music can be put into words to a certain extent, but here the music seems only secondary to conveying some deeper and more abstract message. The album feels very pedagogical, as if it’s trying to teach us, guide us and enlighten us.
Now it may sound like I’m pushing this album as a cure for the whole dreadful state of humanity, as if listening to it will save us from depression, wipe out nihilism and sow peace on Earth. But the album has its flaws too. Mainly in a few parts where the production is simply bad – bad sonic dynamics. The riffs are mostly excellent, but a few are solid at best. It’s hard to talk about more weak points of the album, but they’re certainly there.
I get that this whole review probably sounds utterly nonsensical. I also get that some people won’t relate to a single sentence in this article. For some, Dar De Duh will simply be a completely different experience. If the lyrics are ever translated (though officially they never will be, at least judging by the band members’ interviews), chances are they won’t have anything to do with what I figured the album was getting at. And I readily admit that. That there’s a chance everything I wrote is totally wrong. But that’s perfectly fine too. Because art lives on the knowledge that it always creates new ideas in those who come into contact with it, that it gives birth to new thoughts and concepts, even ones the artist never originally meant to put out there. And I do feel that if an album stirs up feelings in a writer as abstract as Dar De Duh does in me, maybe the article about that album should be somewhat abstract too.
Dar De Duh is an immensely therapeutic creation, made for anyone who wants art as a living form, one that tries to claim a more significant place in the universe, that looks for a more concrete meaning in humanity, and that fulfills those wishes for people who still long for spirit.
Prepared, translated and edited by: Tine Kolenik
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Intimidation is all I should use to describe myself as I write this. It is an illuminating challenge when one is tasked with putting into words, or verbally expressing, something that is so intrinsically immaterial, something which so effortlessly transcends human intuition and thought. Think about it for just a moment: is it not absolutely absurd in how people try to describe music? Everyone does it, arguably in a variety of different ways but, how do we do it? By learning theory and detailing the various harmonies, polyrhythms, timbres, etc.? By expressing the reaction we receive from it and telling people to expect something similar? What happens when we try to describe music that is motivated by a more abstract, intangible longing? Some of us would give up on articulating it, and resort to expressing it with words such as “it’s emotional; it’s soulful; it’s inexpressible”. The cliché goes that music is an international language, but this often gets proven false: many people do not “understand” free jazz/noise music/death metal and most people fail to properly express the experience of listening to music. Intimidating? Oh, absolutely it is. But I do not give up yet.
Dar De Duh is a Romanian phrase which is probably impossible to perfectly translate into English, though commonly it is called “Gift of the Spirit” as a reference. Dordeduh is a phrase which loosely means “Longing for the Spirit”. Spirit? What does this mean? What does “spirit” have to do with music? Could it be related to the soul of music, the emotive expression of anger, loss, sadness, bliss that we often feel and connect with during our favorite songs? Or, is it beyond this? Is it less tangible than our daily emotional concepts?
Dordeduh is admittedly an extremely obscure group, and because nearly everyone who reads this is either a long time fan of the group and the leaders’ former group Negura Bunget, or people who have randomly stumbled upon this page and have no clue what they are or what to expect, I feel obligated to include some brief history: Dordeduh was formed a couple of years ago after the much less obscure, though definitely not Emperor/Burzum status black metal titans Negura Bunget suffered from internal strife, resulting with the departure of the two main song writers, who soon after formed Dordeduh, and released a 2 track EP titled Valea Omului. Negura Bunget is mostly known for their landmark album OM, considered by many of its fans to be perhaps the greatest atmospheric metal album ever made, and was the final release by Negura to include these 2 main leaders who now reside in Dordeduh. Many people have been foreshadowing Dar De Duh, their first LP, as the true sequel or “legitimate heir” to OM. The standards for this release for the few who have waited years for it are immoderately sky high…and they were succeeded.
I do not wish to waste any time whatsoever specifying or detailing any of the songs from this record. The sound is not a complete rehash of old Negura; this is not “OM Version 2.0”. It is very familiar sounding though, as the lush orchestral synthesizers, unorthodox ethnic percussion involving hammers, woods and cultural bells, and ritualistic, spiritual chanting all seem like the typical characteristics reminiscent of Negura. Including, of course, the fluctuation of these clean elements flowing next to the spiraling of metal that takes up approximately half of the album (longtime Negura fans should know that Dar De Duh is less heavy than OM). To put it briefly, Dar De Duh is a slight evolution from OM on a musical sense. I will not compare the two records any longer. They were not meant to be contrasted with, as they are two very different entities, especially on an intuitive level. I am not even going to tell you whether I prefer OM or Dar De Duh.
If Dar De Duh is the gift of the spirit, what does it inspire or instigate within the listener? What kind of emotional response can be deduced from something that is not innately about sadness or happiness of the soul, but instead is about the soul itself? What is this record trying to tell its listeners? On a literal level, I cannot tell you because I simply do not speak Romanian and translated lyrics have yet to appear. Lyrically, this review is completely in the dark.
But the response that I personally receive when I play Dar De Duh is surprisingly not indescribable, not entirely intangible or immaterial beyond the capacity of words and syntax. This album is very teleological, as in it has a very specific purpose. Dar De Duh wants you to realize your full potential for meaning in life, as an individual on this planet, and as a part of the universe. Listening to this album and having spent many months researching interviews of the band, it is evident to me that all 8 songs are very much in tune with an ideal for an authentic living condition for the human race. This is an album that is very much in tune with nature, with the cosmos, with all other life. If Dar De Duh was a living, breathing creature, it would have a deep sense of spirituality and would perhaps even abide by Mysticism.
Dar De Duh feels as if it looks at all human beings, as individuals and as a collective race and is dissatisfied with our current state. It does not want us to waste our millions of years of collective consciousness in depression, in a nihilistic predicament, nor does it want us to be unproductive beings who are simply obsessed with mundane hobbies, prioritizing jobs we do not feel passionate about, ignoring the potential to evolve our minds into (and this is where I realize perhaps I have been inarticulate this entire time) a greater sense of enlightenment. Dar De Duh is both very humanitarian and humanist.
Once I tell you “Ignore me and listen to the album for yourself”, this is simply euphemistic of “My words have failed”. And I think they have. I do not feel comfortable admitting defeat, to admit my, and perhaps language’s in general, incompetence to fully articulate and relay the quintessential ideas that are formed within and by Dar De Duh. It is music, but perhaps the music is secondary as a medium that sends a deeper message, a more abstract form of communication. The album is pedagogic and heuristic, as in it wishes to teach you a better frame of mind in order to ease into an acceptance of your meaning, your relation to all other life, and your acceptance as a small unit of the universe.
It might sound like I’m saying this album is a cure to the current state of humanity, that listening to it will cure depression and eliminate existential nihilism and instigate world peace, but it isn’t a perfect creation. It has practical flaws, relating to a lack of dynamic push in certain transitions that could have been fixed by better audio mastering. The album has excellent pacing, and despite 3 songs that are over a dozen minutes long, it never seems to drag on or appear redundant. Most of the riffs are simply great, and only few are decent. I have little to say on the faults of this record.
Note that I am fully conscious of the possibility this entire review may not make sense. I expect people to read this article and not relate to anything in which I have just described. You may very well love the album at face value, you may find its musical atmosphere something worth being overwhelmed in, and yet not quite see any humanist value/meaning in Dar De Duh. Once the lyrics are translated, it’s possible (though unlikely, based off of previous Negura Bunget lyrics/Dordeduh interviews) that they will have no relevance to anything I have discussed here. I admit that I may be completely wrong. But that is ok, because art is always improved when it inspires new ideas in audiences that the artists did not intend. I simply felt that with an album that inspires more abstract feelings and ideas and intuitions, the relevant article pertaining to such a kind of music should be appropriately abstract in meaning as well.
Dar De Duh is therapeutic; for anyone who wishes to experience art that is more self conscious of its condition as an insignificant part of the universe, for anyone who wants a greater sense of meaning for humanity, for someone who is longing for their spirit, will likely consider this record a gift to their soul.
Line-up
Edmond Karban aka “Hupogrammos” – vocals, guitars, keyboards, dulcimer, mandola
Cristian Popescu aka “Sol Faur” – guitars, keyboards, dulcimer, toaca
Ovidiu Mihăiţă – drums, percussion
Flavius Misarăş – bass guitar, backing vocals
Track list
- Jind de Tronuri
- Flăcărarii
- E-an-na
- Calea Roţilor de Foc
- Pândarul
- Zuh
- Cumpăt
- Dojană
