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DEAD DAYS BEYOND HELP:

        ALEX WARD (guitar & vocals)

            JEM DOULTON (drums)

(Links above lead to the DDBH website.)

LISTEN TO THE NEW DDBH ALBUM "SEVERANCE PAY"

       (Believers Roast BR 14 - released May 12th 2014)

"formidably knotty, complex music which avoids the dry geekiness of US math rock while beating it hands down in terms of intensity and fluidity... Ward’s guitar work leaps between metallic crunch, Fripp-esque tangle and Chadbourne choogle with astounding energy and precision, while Doulton’s drumming swings with commensurate joy and fury" - Derek Walmsley, The Wire.

"Dead Days Beyond Help are just the job after a hard day at the void machine, their precise and frenetic compositions blowing away the debris and cleansing the mind." - Simon Lewis, Terrascope Online.

"Dead Days Beyond Help treat music as something between a four-dimensional sandbox and a hiking trip through the human psyche" - Paul Raven, The Dreaded Press.

Dead Days Beyond Help was formed in 2006 by Alex Ward and Jem Doulton. Alex, known in free-improvisation circles for his work with the likes of Derek Bailey and Eugene Chadbourne, previously co-led the band Camp Blackfoot and has recently collaborated with Charles Hayward, Thurston Moore and Weasel Walter amongst others. Jem, in addition to his virtuosic drumming and work as a visual artist, has more than a small hand in the work of disturbing pop visionary Mr. Ron Jetson. DDBH's first show was in February 2007. Their early repertoire comprised instrumentals and songs written by Alex, which the duo arranged and learned to play mostly in the spacious front room of Jem's then-residence in Clapton; but from mid-2009 onwards, all of DDBH's material has been written collaboratively by Jem and Alex in their weekly rehearsals in a windowless 9'-by-7' room in Camden. Their debut studio album ACCESS DENIED! documents the first period, while its follow-up THE GAME FACE covers the transition to the second phase, fully represented on the next instalment SEVERANCE PAY. Their live performances, which are always structured spontaneously by the two musicians without use of a set list, feature material from both eras of the band, combined with instrumental improvisations and cover songs (these latter aspects of their live sets are documented on the CD-R release UNWRITTEN RULES, recorded at various performances during the first 3 years of the band's existence; while the limited edition release THE VERBING is constructed from entirely improvised material). The instrumental compositions which form the heart of their repertoire are guided by no generic or formal constraints besides the parameters of the guitar/drums duo format, and what the two musicians can physically push themselves to achieve in real time performance. Veering from violent dissonance to sweeping melancholy, hyper-composed precision to pure improvised abandon, and equally likely to leap at any moment into a wall of flattening noise or the most direct country song, DDBH bypass the pitfalls of irony and the obstacle course of genre by the simple guiding principle: intensity-at-all-costs.

In addition to their regular appearances as a 2-piece, Dead Days Beyond Help have also performed a number of primarily improvised live collaborations with various guest musicians including Steve Beresford, Chris Cundy, Shabaka Hutchings, and Alan Wilkinson. Bands DDBH have played shows with have included Poino, Nøught, Cellular Chaos, Zea, Child Abuse, Sal Mineo (Eugene Robinson/Xiu Xiu) and The Devil.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Stream "The Game Face" by Dead Days Beyond Help here.

Stream Dead Days Beyond Help's improvised album "The Verbing" here.

Stream Dead Days Beyond Help's debut album "Access Denied!" here.