NØÍR

The voice of Athan Maroulis will always be linked to the seminal Los Angeles based trio Spahn Ranch, a band that pounded the ’90s industrial scene with an audacious mix of EBM and Electro flavored Synth Pop fused with an atmospheric menacing pall of Goth. To this day, a number of Spahn Ranch songs like “Vortex” and “Heretic’s Fork” still pack dark dance floors around the globe. In the aftermath of Spahn Ranch, Maroulis returned to his native New York City where he decidedly took a decade long break from performing. There, he produced reissues of vintage 1930s and 1940s jazz and blues music while working behind the scenes advising a number of Goth and industrial bands. In those years, Maroulis did on occasion guest on albums by Razed In Black as well as Black Tape For A Blue Girl. The latter he joined on a full-time basis in 2009, cutting an album while also completing tours both here and abroad highlighted by a headlining date at the Leipzig Opera House for Wave-Gotik-Treffen Festival in 2011.

While on a break from Black Tape, Maroulis conceptualized NOIR as a project that would musically bridge together his Industrial and Gothic past into a very moody electronic present utilizing elements of dance, dark ambient, synth-laced hooks along with touches of glitch and EBM. The result in entitled Darkly Near an album influenced by idealized black and white images of New York City, a contrasting filmic backdrop for the aural futuristic pleasures of NOIR.

Lyrically, Darkly Near is an album of endings, one that travels through a dreamy death trip of sensuality littered with sinewy faded silent film stars, Rod Serling scripts, con men and the forlorn recollections of a solitary man waiting for a train pressed against the machinery of today. Released on the heels of 2012’s successful single “My Dear” that featured an exclusive Assemblage 23 remix, NOIR’s mature yet strikingly refreshing Darkly Near album will be supported with a select series of exclusive live dates.