Fronted by Diego Clare, a local spearhead to the New York community and a project of influence and vision, their penname D.A. Crimson has shared a new single called “Barrel to Heaven” this week, along with an accompanying music video. Within a controlled burn of sonic dismemberment, Clare’s performance withers and writhes in the face of loss and the complexity of familial altercations when emotions and memories begin to conflict.

Leaping in strides like a choreographed dance, “Barrel to Heaven” begins with a guitar that quickly establishes the thematic weight, further brought to life by an array of sonic voicings and deliberate timbres – dilapidated yet concise; harsh yet sobering when face-to-face with its grand scheme. “When I wrote it, my grandmother had just passed away after I’d spent a month staying with her and my dad at her house in Costa Rica. There was a lot of familial drama between her kids throughout this process, which I just found really upsetting,” Clare shares about the song. As the chorus follows the movement below, singular harmonics flash out at the end of each repeated stanza, “There’s a way out” – reverberating before screeching in exasperation – “Looking down the barrel to heaven”. “I felt especially attached to her home, my memory of which now feels sort of embedded in this song. In any case, those are the things that came through, or morphed into this kind of Hamlet-ass soliloquy about loss and what remains in the wake of it,” Clare finishes. 

Along with the release of “Barrel to Heaven”, D.A. Crimson has shared an accompanying music video made by the creative duo known professionally as “The Valdez”, which features both Clare and movement by choreographer, J Gash. You can listen to “Barrel to Heaven” out everywhere now.