Author | Michelle King
Often described simply as a “one-woman psych rock band,” Idgy Dean is a Brooklyn based solo artist mastering in weaving together intricate layers of sound to create intensely rhythmic and stupefyingly catchy songs, built live from the ground up. Starting with a drum beat or guitar riff set on loop and adding her own backing vocals and harmonies, Lindsay Sanwald expertly pulls together all the elements you’d find in a full band performance all-the-while dancing around barefoot on stage, creating an energy that’s palpable throughout the room.
An Idgy Dean performance is a captivating experience and the recorded music is nothing to scoff at either. Her first album, OK Cadavers!, was released in 2009 and she’s continued to tease with a handful of EP and single releases since, including 2011’s wonderful Heart & Lung. Now with the promise of a new full-length, Ominous Harminus, we’ve got something to look forward to in 2015.
The concept for the album came from a tragic subway experience, one that inspired an idea of “Apocalypse Optimism—the Renaissance after the Black Death, the green after the volcano, Catastrophe, Mother of Cosmos.” Sanwald explained, “I got giddy with etymology and intellectualizing the work, but the only real way to channel and communicate it’s primordial guts was to drum, chant, yawp, dance—violently, ecstatically—to sound it out, so to speak.”
Sanwald is promoting a Pledge Music campaign to fund the record, and has promised to donate 20% of all proceeds after the goal is reached to Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls. Since the project is now at 111% funding, you can feel lovely knowing that you’re supporting both an inspiring rising artist as well as “a non-profit music and mentoring program that empowers girls and women through music education, volunteerism, and activities that foster self-respect, leadership skills, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.”
Follow Idgy Dean on her own website as well as Facebook, Twitter, and Bandcamp.
