At a bus stop somewhere on Long Island, Dimming set up LED strips, a portable power bank and enough loose wiring to make a stranger call the police. The power bank had cost close to the last cash they had. Dimming had to explain that they were making the cover for a five-song demo, not building a bomb.
There was no Photoshop involved. They had come up with the idea, spent a night looking for the right road and bus stop, bought the props, staged the scene and asked their friend Bianca Monteiro, an illustrator and photographer known as @newyorkfunk, to shoot it. It tells most of the story around Dimming so far: they have made every part themselves.
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Dimming are Brandon Torres on drums, Ned Villafuerte on bass, Kris Bakon and Isa B. on guitars, and Michelle Hong on vocals. The group reaches across Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, with Michelle coming from New Jersey. Their independently released debut, “Dirtnap”, is a five-song demo rooted in New York hardcore, death metal and doom, with a quieter shoegaze influence they plan to push further on later releases.
The starting point was already sitting in Ned’s bass. He had written the melodies for “F.I.T.D” and “Skip Sandwich”, then Brandon added guitars and drums. There was no wider plan yet.
“After that we just said fuck it and decided to try and form a band.”
Kris joined because Brandon and Ned already knew how well he played guitar. Michelle came from a post in the r/Brooklyn subreddit, where she was looking for a band that needed a vocalist. The second guitar position took longer. A few mutual friends tried it, but none had the time to commit, so the group asked Isa whether she wanted to learn.
She had almost no guitar experience. Brandon spent several weeks teaching her the instrument and then teaching her the five tracks that became “Dirtnap”. Instead of waiting for a more experienced second guitarist, they brought Isa in and worked through the songs with her.
For the band, that instinct is tied closely to growing up in New York.
“I feel like growing up in NYC forces a lot of people to figure things out on their own,” they said. “A lot of us don’t come from places of privilege and grow up without role models to look up to, so we kind of have no choice but to do it ourselves, whatever ‘it’ is. For us, extreme music has always been an important outlet so it was natural for this band to form.”
Dimming are new enough that they do not pretend to be deeply established in the local hardcore or extreme music circuit. Many of their friends and mutual friends are involved, though, and the early support has come from bands including Ferment, 100 Hour War, No Values and Ligeia. Since releasing the demo, promotion has largely meant cold messaging local publications, labels and venues while trying to turn five recorded songs into actual bills.
Several members work in other creative forms, so the band also became a reason to make photos, videos and visual concepts themselves. Writing and recording the songs was only part of it. The group have also handled the release, promotion, photo concepts, their own video shoots and edits, and the constant search for enough time and money to keep going.
“Every aspect of this has been DIY, from writing, recording, releasing, promoting, concepting and doing shoots, shooting and editing our own videos, and finding the time and cash to make it all happen when most of us still don’t know where our groceries next week will come from,” they said. “And we love it because we can say that every aspect of this project comes from our own efforts and is ours. We can’t be grateful enough for all of the support we’ve gotten so far.”
The demo itself took around a year and a half. Dimming rehearsed it repeatedly, then recorded, mixed and mastered everything in their practice space by plugging into Reaper. Brandon was teaching himself basic EQ work as he went. The eleven master exports were not eleven separate reinventions. Most of the changes were small and practical: kick and snare tone, slight adjustments to guitar and bass, and repeated attempts to get every instrument sitting at the right level.
“Brandon spent a good amount of sleepless nights mixing through 11 different master exports before finally being satisfied enough with the sound to release the demo.”
Ned’s bass melodies remain central to “F.I.T.D” and “Skip Sandwich”, while Brandon’s guitars and drums pull them towards doom, death metal and hardcore. The songs leave more room for slow chugs than the hardcore bands that first pushed them towards playing. The shoegaze influence stays behind the heavier parts for now, used as support rather than a separate layer demanding attention.
The members came to that point from different directions. Hardcore shows pushed them towards starting a band, but they wanted to go heavier and did not share one fixed idea of what heavy music should be. Cough, Primitive Man, Bongripper, Thou and Gel were early reference points around the demo. Kittie, Faetooth, Sun Organ, Nails, King Woman, Fatal Realm and Invoke have also been in regular rotation, alongside early Decapitated, Cryptopsy, Obituary and Meshuggah.
Their relationship with punk identity was never especially strict. They were not anarchist punks or straight-edge kids. Some of them were heavy stoners when they started writing, and some of that history found its way into the slower parts of the band. Several have since moved away from heavy substance use, but not from the sound that came with those years.
New York’s metal history gave them room to take the hardcore foundation elsewhere. Shoegaze opened another route. They hear a connection between My Bloody Valentine, Lush and Cocteau Twins and the slow chugs of doom metal, but they do not want that influence sitting on top of everything else.
“Contrast is always exciting in art and we have always been interested in combining shoegaze and doom/hc in a way that doesn’t feel too obvious but mixes well as a more subtle, supporting sound to the rest of the tracks,” the band said. “The idea of not confining ourselves into a defined box is important and reflects our personal life perspectives as well. The one thing we want to strive for the most is to not write music for what we think others want to hear but write what we enjoy.”
It also means Dimming want to play mixed bills rather than stay inside one corner of the city. Their first three shows are August 6th, August 7 at The Living Gallery and August 9 at Bar Freda, both in New York City.
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