Andra Dare profile picture

Andra Dare

Andra Dare

About Me


When will the CD be out?
Epic Lifestyle, blending elements of ethereal gothic, industrial, noize, down-tempo, and electronica, started out as a solo recording project in the late summer of 2006. From that fiery time until now, the music has gone through as many permutations and rebirths as I have. Many of the songs I started with have been set aside and new songs have taken their place. And all because of the beautiful and hazardous people one encounters in this dangerous realm of the arts. These are the kinds of people that do not leave one unchanged - poets, photographers, witches, scholars, geniuses, provocateurs and, of course, lovers. Aside from these haphazard divinities, there is, buried within the music, the landscapes I've traversed in the intervening months. There's darkness, storms, monsters, the weeping of cypresses, the ever-presence of the Goddess, shafts of light, and, I hope, some portion of beauty.
By the time Epic Lifestyle is done - and I'll leave that undefined for the moment - I will have many people to thank. While the songs currently on the Myspace player are my own very rough mixes, I've been fortunate enough to have won the aid of the brilliantly gifted (and evil) Doctor Ohm of Heavenly Creatures. Not only is he assisting with the mixing and mastering, but we've managed to collaborate on The Evil Inside, a song featured on his recently released EP New Blood, which you can discover in full on his myspace page and beyond. I'm also lucky enough to have gained the gifted and intuitive artist Claudia Fasold of Golden Ash Graphics as an ally. She's not only a wonderful graphic designer and a great beauty, but she's also a part of the fabulous band IO, which you can and should experience when you visit Claudia's myspace page.
Earlier I mentioned poets. And there are many I have to thank for inspiration, disturbance and perhaps even a few minor derailments. But the work of Ellen Zaks of Skin2Soul captured me early on and moved me so profoundly that I begged her kind permission to use one of her pieces - The Forest - in a song to be featured on Epic lifestyle. Fortunately she has agreed, and has become a much welcome companion and "inspirator" on this private journey.
And there are others. Please stay tuned!

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 4/8/2007
Band Website: under reconstruction
Band Members: Andra Dare
Epic Lifestyle is a solo project:

CD art by Claudia Fasold of Golden Ash GraphicsNear future projects (currently works in progress) will include collaborations with the following artists:
Heavenly Creatures
Ellen Zaks
Mephi
Genre Peak
Finkster
Joy Stern
Morfiouz

More to be added soon!
Influences:
The Goddess Aphrodite
The Goddess Hekate
The Goddess PersephoneMusical Influences:Diamanda Galas, Silence, Trance to the Sun, Bach (the suites), Per Somnia, Lycia, Unto Ashes, VNV Nation, VAS, H.M.B., Massive Attack, Guillaume de Machaut, Clairevoyant, Telefon Tel Aviv, Tori Amos, Hanzel und Gretyl, Hekate, DJ Shadow/Unkle, The sound of Wind in Trees, Numinosum, Bartok, Bill Laswell, Wumpscut, Dead Can Dance, Dark Muse, Ritchie Hawtin (Plastikman), Clan of Xymox, K Plan, Women Breathing, Biosphere, Debaucheries and Derailings, LightMadeFromADeadStar, Chopin, Angels of Venice, NOISUF-X, VOX, Thomas Yorke, Collide, Rabbit in the Moon, Riou, Tagging Satellites, Bjork, Debussy, Sigor Ros, Albeniz, Pan Sonic, Deftones, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Swans, Catherine Wheel, Prodigy, Grieg, Everything but the Girl, FSOL, Aphex Twin, Haloblack, Riou, Nitzer Ebb, Tarrega, Nine Inch Nails, Square Pusher, Portishead, LFO, Ravel, Mazzy Star, Chemical Brothers, Moby, Kate Bush, Eurhythmics, KMFDM, Cranes, Sinead O'Connor, Einstürzende Neubauten, Cocteau Twins, Siouxie & The Banshees, Bauhaus, Depeche Mode, This Mortal Coil, Ministry, Throwing Muses, The Cure, Psychedelic Furs, Pretenders, Patti Smith, Pink Floyd, Led Zeplin, Black Sabbath, Kraftwerk, and into the mists of time...
Poets: Vicente Huidobro, Anne Sexton, Rafael Alberti, WisLawa Szymborska, Ellen Zaks, Rimbaud, Shu Ting, Novica Tadic, Kitt Gardner, Robert Desnos, Raymond Moose Jackson, Rosmarie Waldrop, Roberto Juarroz, Andrea Teatrick, Marin Sorescu, Vasko Popa, Marjorie Welish, Veronica Volkow, Elaine Equi, Cesar Vallejo, Denise Levertov, Eugenio Florit, Audre Lorde, Tadeusz Rozewicz, Diane Ward, Sapphos, Homer, and into the mists of time...
Other: Death Priestesses; Uncontrived Beauty; Dali; Intense, Exquisite Pain; Martha Graham; Nathaniel Hawthorne; The Long Quest to Remember and Recover Human History; Remedios Varo; Watching the people I love bravely circumnavigate blind circles, feeling/creating their Way Out; Voltaire; Storms; Jeanette Winterson; Grandeur; The Children of Iraq; Contrived Beauty; Watching Brilliant, Feeling people wake from the lie that there is something wrong with Them; Vera Rubens; Iatromantic Trance; Honor; Frida Kahlo; Stillness; Micah Vacatio; Greek Magical Papyri; People who, in everyday situations, Stand Up To and Stop Child Abusers; Hieronymous Bosch; Vulnerability; Nikolai Tesla; Honesty; Beauty; Necromantic Dreamwork; Irony; Madeleine Von Foerster; Burning, Obsessive Passion; Darkest Red Wines, Pre-Socratic Shamanism...
Sounds Like: I really have no idea
Record Label: unsigned
Type of Label: None

My Blog

The Forest - feat. Ellen Zaks poetry

The Forest is the 13th song on Epic Lifestyle and closes the cycle its creation. This song is special to me for many reasons, but perhaps the greatest is that it was inspired by and created aroun...
Posted by Andra Dare on Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:02:00 PST

Darkness Creeps over the land...

In other words, I'm moving from San Francisco to the welcoming arms of Seattle. I shall do my best to make the already delicious luminous dark there a shade darker and the infernal fires the smal...
Posted by Andra Dare on Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:04:00 PST

~{+}~

~{+}~  is simply this:  the four chambers of the heart with wings. the heart is always at a crossroads. and never rests there. systolic | diastolic (that's for you, love) on VwwVal...
Posted by Andra Dare on Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:49:00 PST

New Song: The Evil Inside - collaboration with Heavenly Creatures

I've just finished my first collaboration, The Evil Inside,  with Doctor Ohm of Heavenly Creatures, which will be on his brilliant forthcoming album New Blood (2007).  Please enjoy!CREDITS :...
Posted by Andra Dare on Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:55:00 PST

truth, the executioner...

makes of the still small voice a murderess. and these self-assasinations - martyrdoms all - produce your most exquisite flocks of mourning--rising in heavy clouds, black over the horizon of our b...
Posted by Andra Dare on Wed, 09 May 2007 03:39:00 PST