Austin band Holy Wave announce i’m DADA album with new single

The group decamped to Ensenada, Mexico to make the record at El Derrumbe, the studio run by experimental duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete. The location wasn’t chosen for its escapism alone as half of Holy Wave have roots in the El Paso border region, 500 miles west of Austin.

“s33.u.in/HAL”, the first track to surface from those sessions, was described by Ryan Fuson (guitar/vocals) as a salvage job that nearly didn’t make the LP.

“‘s33.u.in/HAL’ is like a prayer to the God of shortcomings, a child God that we are raising to one day be our saviour,” he said. “It was one of the first ideas we worked on for the album, but also one of the last songs we finished. I was listening to a lot of Wagon Christ at the time and wanted the song to basically be a Wagon Christ rip-off, but it just didn’t feel right. Big surprise, that was a tall order. So the song was shelved to the ‘maybe the next album’ part of the new song catalogue. Then, late in our demoing phase, Joey and Julian showed up to practice with some ideas for it. We played around with them, and the song literally just started to write itself.”

The ten tracks on i'm DADA make more room for loops, samples and hypnotic, cyclical grooves than on previous releases. The album’s emotional core was formed in conversations about partnership, breakups, estrangement, and the queasy acceleration of AI.

Holy Wave will tour the US and Canada through July and August, with a West Coast run following in November. No UK dates have been announced as part of this leg. Last year they released a split EP with labelmates Chastity Belt.

i’m DADA artwork

i’m DADA tracklist

“US 54”
“s33.u.in/HAL”
“happy song”
“first DAE”
“lull”
“I’m DADA”
“unison”
“too one”
“to the other”
“dewey’s dirge”