Dana Wachs is a New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based, classically trained cellist, bassist composer and audio engineer, who writes, records and performs as Vorhees — and can trace the origins of her solo musical career, to when she joined the Holy Rollers when she was 19 and dove deeply into the world of touring and live sound as a renowned audio engineer, who worked at NYC-based Greene Street Recording and toured with St. Vincent, Grizzly Bear and others over the course of the next 20 years.
In 2009, Wachs debuted her solo compositions at Death By Audio and from that performance, she continued to work on her own improvised music, influenced by her surroundings and moods and then released her debut 7 inch “The Orchard,” and composing for modern dance, film and commissioned performances and recordings for fashion designer Rachel Comey. And adding to a growing profile, the New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based audio engineer and composer has opened for Cat Power, Matmos and Dum Dum Girls and had played sets at Basilica Soundscape and Iceland Airwaves.
Her long-awaited Vorhees debut EP Black Horse Pike was released yesterday through Styles Upon Styles Records and the EP’s latest single is the delicate and patient “SPL” which features Wachs’ gorgeous and ethereal, Bjork-like vocals over ambient synths and electronics in a song that gently ebbs and flows in a subtly psychedelic fashion. And because of its slow-burning nature, the track manages to possess a quietly challenging nature that requires the listener’s full attention; but once there, the song reveals itself through repeated listens based on the artist’s on experiences as the material explores Wachs’ memories of teenage meanderings in New Jersey suburbs, the scars and ghosts of relationships, and the weird and impossible waking unreality of her insomniac tendencies through the world in ever changing hotel rooms and tour bus bunks.
The recently released video consists of fittingly slow-burning and psychedelic-leaning visuals based around the EP’s artwork, created by Wachs’ mother.
