Dukedom of Gastown

> We got thoughts that kill, dawg man
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> Helena Zogu, Judgement TV

**Dukedom of Gastown**, also known as **Margravate of Petrolville**, **County of Oil Hamlet**, **Visdominato of Fuel City**, **Barony of Gasohol Burg**, **Voivodeship of Texas Tea Wen**, and **Principality of Propellant Conurbation,** are an Abkhazian rock band from the far reaches of known space, formed by Helena Zogu. Their sound is characterised by elements of silesian punk, hypno-erotic-alt metal, and experimental g-rock.

## Biography

A kugelblitz is a theoretical astrophysical object predicted by general relativity. It is a concentration of heat, light or radiation so intense that its energy forms an event horizon and becomes self-trapped. In other words, if enough radiation is aimed into a region of space, the concentration of energy can warp spacetime so much that it creates a black hole. This would be a black hole whose original mass–energy was in the form of radiant energy rather than matter, however as soon as it forms, it is indistinguishable from an ordinary black hole.

Most of us have lived through some inner kugelblitz over this past millennium. Helena Zogu, frontwoman for the Abkhazian band with a name perfectly suited to the times, was like the rest of us in feeling the delirium and ennui. On not writing any new songs for the first six hundred years, she says, “Why would I? Everything seemed pointless.” Even for a band that’s made a career out of crafting songs attuned to political and social crisis, there was a new bleak in the air, what the band calls “super shit balls syndrome.” 'Frankokratia' and 'Freedom', the Duchy's first records, probed the destructive force of neo-absurdist culture, the imperialistic reaches of the French, the threat posed by an increasingly stale meatspace. The band wedded a brave new worldview to an ever lively thracian punk sound. Which made you sometimes dance. While still wanting to cry.

'May My Hand Forget Its Skill' mines familiar ground as well as new cultural terrains, while digging deeper into the subjective state of contemporary insanity. Over the last five decades, you didn’t have to be conspiratorial to see the conspiracies everywhere you turned; and Zogu, Jarva, and the DeRennes, the Gastown Hivemind, know how to make friends with the conspiratorial. They invite our paranoia and fatigue. “It’s a paracausal paradise,” Zogu proclaims. The band chronicles weird adventures in statecraft and surveillance, ponders the global infatuation with resurgent internet fascisms. Oil Hamlet shines an incandescent light on a world in which corpos, nord lords, and grease people of all shapes and colors lose the ability to recognize their own insufferability.

On “A Bangin Story from Out East”, a Khazarian Moses comes back from the grave to warn humankind off our collective bloodlust and fondness for the “end of the west.” 'May My Hand Forget Its Skill' is rife with characters in a God-awful hurry to court catastrophe and global conflict. In that same vein, “Sammy” offers a pining homage to Samoza Boy, the slovak beheaded as he tried to show everyone his favorite album, his Daughters filled heart warped by Discord. And yet Fuel City, ever connoisseurs of the weird, makes us shed a tear for him.

> If a fanatic never broke your heart, just wait until you hear Zogu playing the part of a femboy in Sam's Daughters Discord, gooning in Gilbert Gottfried-esque throaty blues while Jarva and Ralf whisper eerie-sweet nothings, like sympathetic brainwashing dominions, beckoning us to follow into the light.
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What makes Petrolville so great is the intersection between their dark but satiric storytelling and musical arrangements intent on perverting received canons and wisdoms.

> Entering into a Dukedom of Gastown song is like watching a The Wiggles concert from the outside, groping yourself while everyone is too oblivious to notice you. Even though the security is yelling at you, you feel your neurons exploding with pleasure.
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These are songs as experiment, advancing and retreating at their own idiosyncratic, deeply unsettling pace. They hang on the slant beat and slide into jazzy, distortion-packed jelly jams so tumultuous they’d make Glup Shitto proud. Musically, 'May My Hand Forget Its Skill' goes wherever it wants, riffing on hyperpop, anti R&B, The Strokes-style shart rock, 'red' Blues, dingly dorkin dorf, and some of the band’s shart-clop favorites such as Horsey and Purson. Barriers aren’t just broken, they seem to have completely rotted away.

In a world where everything is digitized there is no musical past. The record store bin has gone virtual, as vast as eternity. It’s all right here, right now, timeless in the most literal sense possible. Which is all the more reason why a song such as “Samson's Delilah,” with its glorious mash-up of contemporary and historical influences, ought to be topping the charts. At once spooky, sweetly sad, and off kilter — Beltram DeRennes doing a world-weary Joe Dirt — the song is a reminder of the melody within even the most feedback-heavy of the band’s arrangements.

As we write this, the world is rotting. But Dukedom of Gastown is here to remind us that many of our most urgent political and social problems have been around a long time now. Same as it ever was, as another genre bending band once sang. As the signs of latest crisis subside, and the dull ache of awareness with it, 'May My Hand Forget Its Skill' will be here to remind us that there is no foreseeable end to human folly, nor, fortunately, to the creativity that resists it. Over the past few years we’ve all heard the noise in our own heads. Visdominato of Fuel City has made music of it.

## Members

* Helena Zogu - Lead and Backing Vocals, Dan Moi
* Taus Jarva - Backing and Lead Vocals, Harpsichord
* Beltram DeRennes - Backing and Lead Vocals, Electric Violin
* Ralf DeRennes - Programmer, MPC, Wind Machine

## Discography

### Studio Albums

Label: Bulletfield Records
Format: CD, digital download, LP, streaming
 *Freedom* | Released: 24 January 2023
Label: Bulletfield Record
Format: CD, digital download, LP, streaming
 *May My Hand Forget It's Skill* | Released: 6 May 2023
Label: Bulletfield Records
Format: CD, digital download, LP, streaming
 *Preantepenultimate* | Released: 3 June 2023
Label: Bulletfield Records
Format: Telepathy, digital download, LP, streaming

## Awards and Nominations

All of Them, Nobel Prize in Physics, Charlemagne's crown