INSECT ARK | about

ABOUT

Since 2011, INSECT ARK’s music has evoked visions of dripping and lurching horror films, outer space travel, and gritty noir textures, using delay-drenched lap steel guitar, distorted bass & synths, and acoustic and electronic drums, creating a sonic mural both uncomfortably intimate and icy cold. Currently on their 10th release, Insect Ark is raw, ominous, desolate, and totally unique, transporting listeners willing to surrender to sonic oblivion, and stretching towards the outer realms of the avant-metal, psych doom, experimental and heavy-music worlds.

Hailing from the USA, INSECT ARK is the brainchild of bassist/multi-instrumentalist/composer Dana Schechter. The band operated as her one-woman solo writing and performance project from 2011-2015, later expanding into a duo with the addition of live drums (Ashley Spungin, 2015-2019) and Andy Patterson (2019-2021). In January 2022, drummer Tim Wyskida (Khanate, Blind Idiot God, Azonic) joined, and the band is now officially based in Berlin, Germany.

Schechter is also a video artist by trade, creating immersive, densely layered video projections for live shows.

“A sickening descent to a hallucinogenic abyss...desolate, ambient dread, desert-like sceneries and heavy riffs, slithers and moves in circular motifs” – Pop Matters, 2020

“Schechter’s vaporous atmospheres suspend themselves in the air around the listener. The music pulses and breathes” – Wire, 2021

“Angular and creepy and mystical in all the right ways…instills that anxious discomfort which, counterintuitively, translates into an enjoyable but tense listen” – Invisible Oranges - Feb 2020

Full Band bio here.