Get To Know : Black Doldrums
Tell us about yourselves, your music, and your influences?
I’d say we’re an atmospheric, emotionally driven band built around songwriting and mood. People often describe us as dark, post-punk, or gothic and that’s fair, we’re not trying to be dark for the sake of it, we’re interested in intensity, space, tension and release, the mood is a by-product of that really. Even though the sound and performance is dense, hypnotic or abrasive, it’s melody and hooks that matter. We have quite broad influences, from film scores, particularly the use of tension, space and repetition. Psychologically we’re interested in duality and the darker corners of self, Sophie tends to read and then talk about psychological themes and I take a lot of inspiration and ideas from that when writing the songs and lyrics. We want the songs to feel emotionally raw rather than mechanical.
What’s the story behind how the band came together?
We started as a duo and worked out our sound for a few years before expanding to a trio in 2021. From there, artistically everything still comes from the two of us. Funny enough, it was at the shacklewell at a Bad Vibes all dayer the idea was bestowed upon us by a man in the smoking area who asked us what time our set was…(we weren’t a band)...the next day Sophie picked up a couple of wooden spoons and that was literally how it started.
Looking back at your first album and comparing it to what you’re creating now, how do you feel the band has evolved both musically and personally?
That first album taught us a lot about refining songs and what it is you’re trying to put across, each one is a learning curve and you take something from that into the next one. We never set out to fit into a genre but the producer we worked with at the time recognised those dark and motorik aspects of our music and helped us refine it, which we’ve continued to do throughout each phase afterward.
What’s been on your playlist lately, anyone you’ve been rediscovering, or any new bands that are inspiring you right now?
We’ve been listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack recently by Vangelis as well as John Carpenter. We tried watching all the Halloween films back to back but they go a bit rogue after the second one, made it to the 5th one before surrendering. Kev’s also been listening to the NIN Tron soundtrack which was excellent. We’ve been listening to quite a bit of Depeche Mode recently and watching their old concerts on Youtube, as well as some Italo Disco and some Balkan and Soviet Synthwave and Darkwave. You can listen to our playlist to hear more stuff we’ve been digging into lately.
Anything exciting happening in 2026/ What can fans look forward to?
We obviously have this big UK and Europe tour that this show is part of in April and May. We’re just wrapping up recording our third album, so that release and all the exciting stuff that goes along with that will be coming out soon! We are also releasing our own self produced and self released live album from our show last year in Belgrade, Serbia. This London show will be to celebrate that, it’s a self release we’ve created and funded all ourselves with just 300 vinyl copies, we’re really proud of it, so you have that to look forward to!!