Dark Bardo Invite You to "Avalon" on their Hauntingly Hypnotic New Single

Los Angeles duo Dark Bardo — Filip Mitrovic and Andy Baldwin — has returned with another alluring new single “Avalon.” It’s the fourth song the enigmatic band has shared this year, continuing their immersion into ever more groovily-minded and enthralling soundscapes. This time inspired by the memory and legacy of a Melbourne, AU mansion that once served as the gathering place of the city’s street artists, musicians, dancers, poets, and others.

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“Avalon” paints the mansion and community it fostered in a mythical light, one that’s both created and sustained by the duo’s penchant for mind-bending production. From the moment the track begins — thrumming anxiously with overblown bass and a jangle of percussion — it sweeps you away in a current of irresistibly funky melodics.

As spacey electronica blinks and glimmers in the background a set of ethereal vocals cut through the simmering warbles: “Come one one come on / We’ll save your soul / In Avalon.” Launching the song into this earnest rush that’s made frantic and haunting thanks to the whining synth shrieks that cut through it. And just as it starts to dissipate — the beats kick in again and you’re pulled through a wormhole of sound back to Avalon.

The new single is as much an ode to Avalon as it is a kind of rallying cry for what it represented as a place of transcendent creativity — unfolding as a frantic homecoming. Welcoming fellow wayward souls to this oasis in the form of a turn-of-the-century lakeside mansion located in the inner city.

But it also touches on the various personas that fill Dark Bardo’s songs. Including the elusive and mystical “Mountain Man,” a being manifested by the duo as a symbol of both love and light that empowers the human spirit, who served as the subject of one of their prior singles.