David Boring – Liminal Beings and Their Echoes
David Boring – Liminal Beings and Their Echoes
Damnably / UN.TOMORROW
Release Date: 12/01/26
Review by Jon Deaux
8/10
I listened to “Liminal Beings and Their Echoes” while my boots were full of sweat and dust, and my hopes were somewhere between “this is gonna leave a mark” and “well, I guess I deserved it.” David Boring didn’t let me down. This is the difficult second album. This is also the sound of a band slowly crawling out of a shallow grave that they dug for themselves, shaking off dust, and asking you if you’ve managed anything while they were out getting some rest.
Seven years have passed, the world is falling apart at the seams, and one’s own personal disasters are adding up like an open bar tab, and this is what comes out of the wreckage. This definitely hasn’t been a case of nostalgia, of reunion album sentiment beyond the sum of the band’s already considerable parts. It’s a buzz block of noise, of electronics and instincts.
‘Chapter Ø’ bursts forth like the intro to a public nuisance, thick with menace and the effort to suppress. You sense that something bad and ugly is always poised to burst through the gates at the earliest possibility, and the pain is all part of the torture.
But musically, it’s all about friction and control, scratch scratching noise-rock against the aggression of no wave, all pushed along by the thuds of electronic body music, which pounds like the “we’ll show it anyway” heartbeats in the music’s rhythmic centres. There’s nothing warm about synths from Jason, which slice like a disinfectant, probing and methodical, guitars that screech and rasp as they complain about being wronged in the world, while Gavin and Dave don’t “play riffs” but instead pick apart and reconstruct to be mean and tight, aggressive motion from Gut on drums, like a clock that marches on, ticking away without care about your timing.
Janice’s voice has many emotions. Yes, the pain is certainly in the voice, but that pain has had to temper itself with other pain that has been interpreted in a way that is driven by anger and intellect and the drive to survive. It’s not a reaction to you. It’s simply laying out a line, like a prescription. This, I understand. This, you do after you’ve already cried. You’re just tallying.
The singles each differ in their own type of collapse, as ‘Nancy Nightmare’ falls apart, a type of self-reflection dissolution out of which one way or another resolves to a type of troubled bliss—one as if one were jitterbugging in the debris simply because it leads nowhere.
‘Jenny Rotten’ has the ability to isolate through glitching and feedback loops, the sound of being alone with your thoughts until they decide they’re gonna start beating you up.
‘Martyr#1’ prides itself on the pain that comes with getting kicked around but not kicked out, just sort of stumbling out of bed feeling meh about the whole thing just because, well, someone’s gotta wash dishes. There are quieter stretches too, but these are far from comforting.
‘Earth Song’ is the admission of defeat without relinquishment. ‘Visit Me (Cabin Song)’ leans in with a painful intimacy that borders on being intrusive, teetering on overstepping the boundaries of things that one ought not to have been privy to in the first place. And then it takes that emotion and combines it with adrenaline and noise until the walls come crumbling down. This is the mingling of tenderness and creepiness. This is rude.
‘Machine #4’: Is the appearance of hopelessness in this machine, not a human entity, the suffering a process, and you’re just a user of the system.
‘Still/Life’ spreads regret- This is an unabsolution-seeking monologue since they know better. The first time there’s an ascertainment of a rise, an approach towards ascension – not towards salvation but towards illumination – occurs with “Midnight Gospel.” Painful since, at least in that role, you know which is up.
And, finally, ‘Coda Lamella’ puts the whole process on ice just where it is, with no emotional investment whatsoever. This, of course, is the building of a body of work, the gathering of evidence, the waiting for the results. This, as I said, is all a remove, and the beauty of it is that it refuses to convey the message, the answers, the conclusions. To have the toolbox of the survivor, the means of escape in the guise of the well-timed snort of derision, is to realise that I find this lack of emotional investment a truly refreshing breath of fresh air.
However, that which prevents “Liminal Beings and Their Echoes” from being consumed by the darknesses that lurk within its depths is a hope that shines, but one that lacks sparkle and spunk. This is an album that envisions a healing that is ugly, irregular, and anything but photogenic. Healing, as this record will testify, is sometimes loud, sometimes messy, and sometimes just plain silly.
The end of it leaves me exhausted, alert, almost alive. Almost as if I’d lived through something pointless and necessary. David Boring is more perceptive, more cynical, more calculating than ever, having so many years of suffering and confusion in him to distil this honesty.
“Liminal Beings And Their Echoes” is neither comfort nor pleasure but is instead companionship in the dark. Sometimes it is enough. It’s a cold, confrontational, and darkly funny record that refuses to temper the sting. I wouldn’t play it at a party unless I was determined to make my guests scatter, but I’d definitely have it in close range on those nights when the world seems an antagonistic place and a frontal attack is what I need to confront reality.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Chapter Ø
02. Nancy Nightmare
03. Jenny Rotten
04. Earth Song
05. Visit Me (Cabin Song)
06. Martyr#1
07. Visit Me (Body Song)
08. Machine#4
09. Still _ Life
10. Midnight Gospel
11. Coda Lamella
LINKS:
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