Despite the only tolerable weather this August awaiting us outside, we’re in Chris Wardlaw’s basement, avoiding the remaining summer heat for a history lesson.
“This is next level,” Chris declares as he holds up a Warbox demo tape before going into 20 other area hardcore bands worth noting. Crates of Worms, his band’s self-titled LP, prop up a teetering wall of tapes, CDs and 8-tracks as he zips from corner to corner, adding to the growing pile of music on his ironing board. The collection spans two generations of Wardlaws, both obsessed with documenting the Western Mass DIY scene ever since Chris’s dad was high school classmates with J Mascis. It’s Chris’s last day in Amherst before heading north to finish college, so the essential records he’s laid out from his days in the 413 (with some curation from his father) are as much a eulogy to his formative years as they are an education for me.
Between throwing on his favorite Neutral Fixation song and an “absolutely twisted” early track from his best friends in Taxidermists, a glossy flyer for Taylor Swift’s 1989 ends up on the floor. The pop star’s face is beaming on top of a 1.6 Band CD, encouraging a meet and greet opportunity long since passed. I hold it up, a lone piece of mainstream in a sea of DIY bands come and gone, and, to my surprise, an unabashed grin forms on Wardlaw’s face. “Oh yeah, that album is fire. Had to get the deluxe edition at Target!” He seamlessly changes course and throws on one of the most blistering no wave bands I’ve ever heard while reminiscing on a local musician who played while “chewing an entire fuckin’ pack of Big League Chew.”
To say Wardlaw doesn’t shy away from poptimism or his esoteric mental catalog of bands would be a massive understatement, but it’s easy to sense after an afternoon with members of the Dark World collective that you’d have to be a little fearless to join their ranks.
After roughly five years, Dark World boasts a roster sandwiching noise rock bands alongside internet cultured rappers, leaving the grey area between genres to be filled with autotuned vocal experimentation, left-of-center slacker rock anthems and a love for VHS-recorded nostalgia. Upon its inception, Dark World originator and producer Lucas Kendall couldn’t have imagined any scene accepting their genre-crossing tastes, even one as open minded as Amherst’s.
“For a while, I was doing punk stuff always,” Kendall admitted in a phone interview. “I was like, ‘this is my field, I’m a white kid in Western Mass, playing punk is what you do.’” Kendall was years away from starting Worms with his younger brother Dana and Wardlaw when his catalyst to become a producer came. “Around sixth or seventh grade, I got really into Lil’ Wayne, Clipse, and a lot of early 2000’s hip hop. I felt more comfortable in myself and more comfortable seeing other people experimenting with different genres after that.”
- Morimoto (right) and Kendall (left)
Two of Kendall’s earliest partners were Dana, who aided in drums and production, and Sen Morimoto, a classmate with the same level of ambition to juggle rapping and playing in bands. “Dark World became a collective very quickly [after we met],” Morimoto recalled. “We pretty much immediately had each other’s back on shit and took all of the music very seriously. Even when we made stupid music, we all supported each other.” For Kendall though, Dark World’s inception came with the renewed interest in rap collectives around the late 2000’s. “Letter Racer in New York were big for us. Odd Future, for me, was like, ‘oh, kids are making their own music and videos and it’s not in the corporate way of doing things,” Kendall added. “We’d been doing that since sixth or seventh grade, but after both of them, we were like, ‘fuck, we need to put a name to our thing!’”
After a Yu Gi Oh!-referencing name stuck and their initial fear of treading into hip hop faded, the Dark World crew began amassing like-minded friends at a rapid fire pace. Adding to their appeal was the decision to include noise projects, poetry, and punk bands under the collective’s umbrella, which brought Wardlaw and his Pale Horses solo project into the fold. “I met Lucas and Dana my sophomore year of high school. When we had our first Whirl practice, we wrote “Throw Up” and “Red Balloons’,” Wardlaw recalled. “After that, I was like, ‘well shit, let’s fucking go.”
After a minor lawsuit forced them to cease using the name Whirl, the newly minted Worms went on a string of strong early shows, including opening spots for Titus Andronicus, Man Man, and Screaming Females. “Before we could do anything, before we had the resources to tour, we got all these fire gigs,” Wardlaw added. “The crazy part was that none of us were even legal yet.”
Our afternoon in Chris’s basement happens to be the precursor to the evening’s five year anniversary show for Worms, which also acts as the band’s last show in the area for the foreseeable future. He assures me that tonight wouldn’t be the end of Worms, although shows become incredibly scarce while he and Dana finish their studies. Wardlaw clicks into full promoter mode as we drive into town, hustling around Amherst to post MS Paint-inspired flyers on every bench and shopfront.
Between stops at his favorite high school hacky sack spot (in front of a Chinese restaurant), best pizza place in town (Antonio's), and the park where Wardlaw’s first date and Salvia trip occurred (not simultaneously), we find Dark World rapper Eric the Ratt outside Mystery Train Records looking to bum a rollie. With a mane of curly hair and a hemp sweatshirt loosely hanging off his shoulder, Eric is pretty much how I imagined every twenty-something in Northampton looking like, but his sincerity is immediately disarming. As we scan the record racks at Mystery Train, Eric and I begin talking about the collective. He offers a few words regarding his teen years and young 20s with Dark World, but as we get to know each other at the show later, he opens up. “Dark World saved my life, man,” he states without hesitation. It could’ve sounded laconic coming from anyone else and he never elaborates further, but there’s no doubt in my mind he absolutely means it.
For most long term members, Dark World provided some life-saving by acting as an incubator to create their most substantial work. Ender Arnold, the former noise prodigy turned angst-ridden rapper, God’s Wisdom, refers to the collective’s early days as a “men’s club for weird kids who got sick of all the bullshit and competition.” Armed with an unconventionally nasally delivery and kaleidoscopic videos akin to if the internet gained a stream of consciousness, God’s lack of “bullshit” paid off in the form of his collectively lauded Goth LP, touring with Palberta, and features with now-Dark World friend Mal Devisa. While Arnold’s story echoes many of the members as they traded styles and monikers over the years, there’s a vital uniqueness to each member’s genesis. Morimoto attested that everyone’s change is less of a coming-of-age and more of a coming-of-awareness.
“When we first started making hip hop music, there was definitely a shock value that we thought was cool, but I don't think any of us feel that way anymore. That had a lot to do with why I was going by the name Jap.” Morimoto didn’t mind defending his former stage name and Japanese heritage to offended show-goers, but a reconsidering came after the release of his debut LP Black Mass in 2013. “I realized one day that it wasn't even me who came up with it. It was, like, a joke some white friend was making, so realizing it wasn't my idea made me uncomfortable using it.” Morimoto now operates under his last name on the eve of his second LP, For Me and Ladie, which boasts 12 self-produced affirmations of a long term relationship. Gone are the shock factor and braggadocio of past releases (i.e. promising that he’s “better than Jay-Z or Eminem or any other veteran”), but the confidence on Ladie needs little stating. “We all make dope shit now, so it’s just that much easier.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQVh8q1hvUw
Departing from Eric and the downtown strip, Wardlaw and I end up at a seemingly infinite expanse of corn fields. Taxidermists reside in a slanting farmhouse on the edge of the fields, covered room to room in decades old floral wallpaper. Keeping their raucous, angular noise in mind, it’s somehow out of place finding singer Cooper Handy situated in the quietest part of town, noodling with an unplugged electric guitar in anticipation for a show. Dark World members and friends start trickling through for light pregaming, but Handy and his bandmate Salvatore McNamara remain on a porch overlooking their land, moving around only to pass the guitar back and forth with Wardlaw. The duo, although keeping fairly consistent in sound over their four LPs, was not exempt from their own massive life shifts due in part to Dark World.
Originating in Martha’s Vineyard, Taxidermists made the move to Amherst after years of involvement with Dark World through Sweat Enzo and Handy’s own lo-fi, glitch-poppy Lucy project. Collectively in a post-high school state of uncertainty, Handy, McNamara, and a few Dark World friends began renting a house known as The Farm during 2012 and 2013, eliciting some of the collective’s most beloved recordings. “We didn't know how to live on our own very well and we drove each other crazy,” Morimoto added, “but it definitely laid the foundation for Dark World's legitimacy.”
Although much of that legitimacy came from the work of those core members and Taxidermists, Lucas insists favoritism doesn’t apply for Dark World. “People like to put that there’s pyramids of Dark World and some members are more important than others, but you get out as much as you put into this really. I may put the most of my energy and time into Dark World, but if other people did, they would get as much out of it as I do.”
The collective hustle has clearly paid off as a small crowd had formed for Worms around a colonial-looking dorm on Amherst College’s campus. The remaining dorm residents enrolled in summer classes have christmas lights and strobes pulsating out of their windows, casting flashes of light down on fans and the collective’s members, who’ve huddled around a few communal 40 oz. bottles.
Although the typical Dark World crowd overlaps in age with the strobe-lit college kids, there’s a definite divide between the groups. God’s Wisdom is quick to call most of the scene “a bunch of fuckboys, crusty losers, racist punks and old ass losers,” but DJ Lucas views the scene in a slightly more diplomatic light. “It definitely caters to a certain audience. Like, a bunch of upper-middle class college students who are interested in getting drunk, going to a party and having some easy-to-listen-to music.” Although he is aware the collective’s music occasionally get a rap for aggressiveness, Lucas feels it isn’t any different from punk of Western Massachusetts’s past. “If you’re not making the same kind of music as what’s hot with [college kids], they don’t really give a fuck about you.”
If anything, their circle of fans certainly give a fuck, to which Dark World return the favor by maintaining a consistent mission of genre mashing in their live shows. Local rapper Dro Brown opens the show to a slowly filling room, but anyone present from Dark World is moving with house party-level fervor for the relative newcomer. Any kids from the dorm that have trickled in for Brown are visibly thrown fifteen minutes later when Taxidermists come on. Laying even further onslaughts of noise to their already noise-filled back catalog, McNamara plays at caffeinated speeds as Handy squeals with his disjointed guitar work. Some of the dorm kids leave, but a handful stay. Whether they’ve adjusted to the frequency Dark World operates on remains to be seen, but they’re here nonetheless and the energy is infectious enough to stay. The shift in sound is unrecognizable to some like Eric the Ratt, who does everything short of swinging from the rafters as the show’s unofficial hype man.
Before Worms take the floor, Josue, a relatively new rapper to the Dark World family, is goaded on to perform his debut single, “Give Me Some Time”. The song documents his anxieties in the wake of a friend’s suicide and is easily one of the heaviest documents of aggression Dark World has released thus far. Josue is all smiles though, coming out teeth-bearing and hopping with his new crew in celebration. The Kendall brothers stop what they’re doing to watch, while Wardlaw is doing his best to tune his guitar and bob along. We spent an afternoon discussing how to process extreme eclecticism when, in fact, Dark World work simply by applying the same punk tenants of visceral release and acceptance to all their projects.
After Worms’ set, the last party of the summer moves to Dro Brown’s apartment. Disposable cameras and bottles of gin get passed around, documenting the night while simultaneously hazing it over in plumes of smoke. Lucas remains in a corner, smiling with his “DARK W∆RLD” knuckle tattoos in full display with a bottle in hand. Song requests are shouted at a near constant rate with friendly bickering, but it’s the push and shove of friendship that balances the crew. The friendship also permeates in Lucas’s Lil B-raised musings and continues through Dark World affiliate Mind of Seul’s Kenyan representation and defiant positivity. It especially existed in the decision to make punk records out of a farmhouse as much as it did when they incorporated rap as a means to fully encapsulate and include the scene. Dark World is, first and foremost, a no-bullshit act of friendship, but its results have been a surprise even to its creators. “It was there for the people that wanted it and now, it’s still going,” Lucas concluded. “I thought it would fall apart years ago.”
With how much life-saving it’s done, falling apart doesn’t seem like an option anymore.