Nov 7, 2020
from Up (2020)
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from Up (2020)
Iska Dhaaf, 2013
Cafe Pettirosso, Seattle
I took this shot of Iska Dhaaf back in 2013 following an interview, when they just had a pair of singles out. This was my first time meeting Benjamin Verdoes but I’d known Nathan Quiroga since college when I directed him in two plays, but in the mean time he’d gone on to pursue music after a fairly successful run as Buffalo Madonna in Mad Rad. This was one of those shots that I took and was immediately like “yep that looks like a band,” maybe a little generic but I liked that I could take a shot like that. The real quandary for me was color or black and white. The color shot was unique lit by a street lamp and the purple tones of the setting sun, but then in black and white I got this nice grit and that metal garage door just screams grit. Back then I was doing these photoshoots in no more than fifteen minutes, so I was always glad when any of them came out looking good.
Iska Dhaaf Debuts Their Music Video: CHRYSALIS
Over the summer, I had the chance to go with Iska Dhaaf on a few tour dates and was blown away by their energy, erudite musicianship and their intellectual depth. Their album, The Wanting Creature explores the landscape of the human condition in its endless search for satisfaction in all things passing. The band taps literary heavy hitter, Karl Ove Knausgaard in their song, "We Are", highlighting the ephemeral nature of existence. As the song rings on the ebb and flow of experience draws you into a solipsistic and euphoric coma only to raise the pulse and bring the melody to a fever. "Laura Palmer" stalks across a winter landscape into the precipice between the real and the imaginary, questioning which is which. The title track of The Wanting Creature offers a dulcet opioid rush of blooming energy, sounding like a modern hymn to the post apocalypse.
Chrysalis shares these themes, but with focus on the beauty and pain of transformation and how breaking and pain are paths to a newly emerging freedom. Buy Their album, The Wanting Creature
When you get to not just post about songs like this one from Iska Dhaaf, but also go see it in a record store. #winning
See the rest of Creative Loafing Tampa’s live music roundup for tonight here.
Onry Ozzborn - Flee The Colony (ft. Nathan Quiroga of Iska Dhaaf)
Iska Dhaaf - Say What You Want
