Dan Schubarth

ELK AND THEIR ILK is a solo side project of mine that is only guitar and effects, no drums, bass, or vocals. The music is a combination of riffs, noise, experimental sounds and production techniques, as well as a place to put a few tunes/ideas that didn’t really fit in with my other projects. With this project I have freed myself from the confines of traditional songwriting and drum beats, and have an almost “anything goes” attitude. Really the only limitation I imposed on myself was “only guitar and effects.” And I spent a lot of time as well trying to coax out some of the gnarliest tones I could get from my equipment.

The first album, “root fire” was released in June 2023. It was created as a cathartic release while grieving the loss of my beloved dog Blondie, who died in August of 2022. The second album, “for eons” was released January 2024. It is a little less chaotic than the first album but still gets a bit crazy in spots. This album was about experimenting with some new effects I had gotten, and new (to me at least) ways of mixing and combining sounds to come up with some truly interesting soundscapes.

I have always been interested in all kinds of music, and that includes stuff like japanese noise music, crazy atonal modern “classical” music, free jazz, anything trippy or weird. All that kind of stuff was an influence on this project, as well as stuff like heavy doom riffs and groovy fuzz sounds. While a lot of the music on the ELK albums may sound chaotic, everything is deliberate and exactly where I want it to be and how I want it to sound. So I recommend approaching this music as regarding each piece as a deliberate composition, and the albums as taking you on a trippy sonic journey. For best results, listen to an entire album all at once, in the dark, as loud as possible. Enjoy.

You can hear them on any streaming service, including here on YouTube: root fire, for eons

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