Just months after releasing the collaborative project i'll see you in another life when we are both cats with shoegaze band Hitch Von Cassen & The Dreamers, musician and producer Dan Van Nard announces the release of his new solo EP, titled restless.
Comprising 6 tracks with a total running time of 24 minutes, the work is available starting today on Spotify, Bandcamp and across all major digital streaming platforms.
Characterized by a fully instrumental production navigating cinematic post-rock, shoegaze, and alt-rock, restless presents itself as a circular concept EP. The title finds its visual counterpart in the cover artwork, which depicts a turbulent sea balanced by strict formal composure. Having been active for years in independent sound experimentation and sound design through his creative research space DVN Studio Lab (with releases including Cuspide, Rouge, La Tendresse, and numerous electronic EPs), Dan Van Nard expands upon impressions gathered during the summer.
Written and recorded using a minimalist approach, the EP directly addresses the paradox of contemporary alienation and the virtualization of human emotion.
The tracklist is structured to build a dynamic narrative. It opens with the ambient pads of the intro track inhale, moves through Slowdive-inspired shoegaze saturation on dive, and transitions into the rhythmic decompression of dream-pop and indie-rock on summer.forever. and south pier. The emotional climax ignites with across the sea, before resolving in the seven-minute closing track, exhale. After driving a relentless rhythmic loop powered by an industrial arpeggiator, exhale concludes
in its final moments with an entirely acoustic, live-mic'd outro (featuring acoustic guitars, xylophone, percussion, and piano), marking a definitive return to physical, tactile reality.more