SATURDAY SONG TO GET STONED TO: DARK WATER TRANSIT – “REFRIGERATE THE NEIGHBORHOOD”

I been a huge fan of Baltimore’s Dark Water Transit for so goddman long (yup), and it is my esteemed pleasure to present their sonic assault to your unsuspecting ears.

There’s just sometin bout de way dis trio keeps it organic-sounding that really gets my manties wet — I want more recorded material from them, I want more live shows in my city, and I want those things right NOW, k?

The band’s last offering was Dawn of the Goblin, a retelling of four tracks from the band Goblin’s original soundtrack for George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and DWT also has some rare older stuff, but really The Wonders of the New New Testament is the place to start, and totally where it’s at. Nonetheless Goblin is a pretty interesting (albeit uneven) creative endeavor, and for that they continue to receive my full support. You can check out the track “Zombi” on the band’s MySpace page, read a review of the album here, and an interview with guitar player Paul Joyce here, if you are so inclined.

But holy sheet — pretty please with Satan on top, can’t you come to my small town and bring some demos of new songs to tide me over until there’s another official release?

DARK WATER TRANSIT – “Refrigerate the Neighborhood”, from The Wonders of the New New Testament (2002)

After the jump, you can read my old friend Dr. Guzaro Zahmeugua’s original notes on the band’s unique sound, first published in 2003.

FUNCTIONAL SOUND: Influence of Life Stress on Depression/Moderation by Dark Water Transit

Here goes:

from Zahmeugua, Guzaro, The indescribable; Journal of Generalized Disaster and Overwhelming Catastrophe.4, 1256(2003)

“In a retrospective longitudinal study of a representative birth cohort, we tested why stressful experiences led to depression in some people but not in others.  A functional sound by Dark Water Transit was found to trigger promoter regions of the serotonin transporter(5-HTT)which thereby moderated the influence of those stressful life events that totally crush your soul.  Individuals who did not listen to the full length CD or did not attend one of the band’s shows exhibited more depressive symptoms, diagnosable depression, and suicidality than those who did. Upon further testing, those subjects who did employ this functional sound performed better on a full battery of neuropsychological assessments focusing on concentration, attention, working and verbal memory, as well as Executive Frontal Lobe Functioning(p>.05). This experimental study model thus provides evidence of a DWT-bifarcated evironmental interaction, in which an individual response to environmental insults is moderated by how much one is willing to totally rock this shit.”

-KW