"Off-White Colosseum is as sharp and jagged as the saw whose rhythmic thrumming serves as a familiar guidepost through the seven track album. With great acumen, Sunk Heaven crafts an inimitable kind of wilderness: one full of mirrors, where it is always night. Through dense and dreamlike woods we are chased, the distant echo of footfalls quickening and the silver beam of a single searchlight trailing behind. For a moment, the lilting of warbling synths offers refuge, a soft place to hide from the harsh, unblinking gaze of a part of ourselves yearning to be revealed. But hopes of safety are dashed when a voice rings out like a shattering pane of glass, and the hunt continues.
Caught at the edge of the forest and guided into the heart of a machine so broken that it never stops running. The rhythmic pace speeds and slows, but the incessant drumbeat reminds us: parts of us which have been spurned always catch up to us without ever having to pick up their pace. We are thrown into battle with a memory and forced to embrace it tightly, or else be smothered. When we emerge from the ring victorious, we find that the wilderness has burned.
Every bit as vulnerable and visceral as Sunk Heaven’s live performances, Off-White Colosseum lingers as vividly in the mind as a dream in which a deeply shrouded truth is laid bare. "
- Seven Phillips
Off-White Colosseum was recorded during Sunk Heaven's artist residency at Pioneer Works at the beginning of 2021, engineered and produced by Brooklyn-based Mark Bennett. The album features a hand built drum set composed of contact mic'd pieces of scrap metal from Red Hook's surrounding industrial landscape (performed by Sunk Heaven) and collaborations from Leila Bordreuil, Jackson-Pratt, and Jenna Rose of Anatomy.
Vinly edition of 166 copies.
credits
released October 24, 2023
Bass on Silent, Ivory: Jenna Rose
Electronics / tape loop on Skeletal Mess: Jackson-Pratt
Cello on Portrayal of Sifters in the Hollow: Leila Bordreuil
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