Given the current climate, it’s not a bad time to bag yourself a new gaff. With everyone fleeing the city and taking temporary refuge in their box teenage rooms, 2021 could be an interesting year for estate agents. A new venture keen to get a foothold in the market this year is Damos Room. Don’t be fooled by their website
though, the trio of Pondoo, Polar Kid and Rex Domino are not another immoral, money-grabbing estate agent, but producers of “property oriented noise-rap” as they recently proclaimed in an interview with London In Stereo.

2020 was a big introductory year for Damos Room as they were part of the Future Bubblers development programme organised by Giles Peterson’s Brownswood Music, on top of recording and releasing their first series of mixes labelled DR Viewings. Three viewings in and we’re starting to appreciate the unique experimental tastes of these talented Brits. Pondoo and Polar kid lay a mongrel assortment of beats across each mix as the collage of genres is no different to the variety of homes one visits when searching for that all important inner city flat. Rex Domino meanwhile provides the nonchalant, unfiltered dead-British bars (lyrical not physical) as he casually cites budgetary measures and minimum spend, import, export, cash crops and paranoia - a snippet of the 21st century told through modern day poetry.

Their mix series is comprised entirely of original content, and is an experimentation of stanzas and sounds, blends and arrangements, between glitchy breaks, persistent drone, flowing hip hop, and everything in-between. Their latest in the series, DR Viewings #3, is particularly distinctive as it incorporates the monastic sounds of a 130-year-old pipe organ sat in St Mary’s Cathedral in Portsmouth, carefully looked after by The Organ Project. The juxtaposition of a short snapping snare against a bellowing organ may not amuse a church choir, but it sure does delight my sensory glands. Just as one of the godfathers of minimal, Charlemagne Palestine, once professed to me and a church full of hypnotised listeners; “the organ is the best synthesiser in the world”. The man may have had a point.

Damos Room’s much anticipated first EP Bricolage / Bees is out on Bandcamp March 29th. The limited edition 7 inch comes with its very own printed lease agreement insert and corresponding door key, so sign the dotted line and pre-order while it’s still on the market.