How can a fifth album be a debut? With David Obuchowski’s compartmentalization skills, almost anything is possible.
While thrashing away in Goes Cube, his acclaimed Metal outfit, Obuchowski was also making music so far removed from his primary genre that he was forced to create an alternate musical identity to accommodate his moonlighting activities. Thus was born Distant Correspondent. Under this banner, Obuchowski was able to record four full albums of material while maintaining Goes Cube’s full Metal racket.
Three years ago, Obuchowski relocated from New York to Colorado and struck up a friendship with Michael Lengel, which turned into an email collaboration — Obuchowski would send Lengel random guitar parts and Lengel would add bass and drums, coming up with rhythmic structures that Obuchowski had not anticipated. In relatively short order, Obuchowski included Emily Gray from U.K. etherealists Meanwhile Back in Communist Russia as a collaborator and Tyler Wilcox as a bassist, and the solo project (Obuchowski had written and performed all the music on the first four Distant Correspondent albums) morphed into something of an actual band. Obuchowski also enlisted the help of Indie chanteuse Edith Frost (has it really been eight years since It’s a Game?), who provided her signature vocals to Distant Correspondent’s new self-titled album.
Distant Correspondent has been described as “wintery,” “moody,” and “Joy Division if Ian Curtis had been on antidepressants,” all of which are appropriately applicable to the band’s darkly cinematic ‘70s-to-now soundscapes.
For this particular leg of Distant Correspondent’s tour, Frost’s vocal contributions will be translated by Cincinnati’s Margaret Darling, fresh off the June announcement that the popular band she co-founded, The Seedy Seeds, would be taking a lengthy and perhaps permanent break. If it’s not the best reason, it’s certainly a strong justification to experience the fruits of David Obuchowski’s musical alter ego.
DISTANT CORRESPONDENT plays Monday, Nov. 4 with Mack West and Margaret Darling at Mayday in Northside. Buy tickets, check out performance times and get venue details here .
