Los Angeles’ Days Between Stations have released their fourth album, “Perpetual Motion Machines (Music For A Film).”
“Perpetual Motion Machines” is the result of
DBS founding members keyboardist Oscar Fuentes Bills and guitarist Sepand
Samzadeh working on the music for a documentary film about Jean-Paul Bourdier in
the mid-2010s. As the music reached completion, the group was offered the
opportunity to release their music as a “proper” album. Sepand says, “Jean
Paul’s artwork was our muse, and we scored the music to pictures and to
existing films.” Ultimately the changing roster of film producers developed new
goals for their project, and the band focused on turning “Perpetual Motion
Machines” into an album now available digitally, on CD, and vinyl.
There are two music videos for the album. The latest (was released on November 29) is a performance video “Being” which features the band and vocalist Durga McBroom (Pink Floyd, Flashdance).
"Being" felt unfinished when the group
decided to release this music as an album. Oscar had written a melody that
lent itself to vocals, and “we based them around the general concept of
existence and trying to inject Jean Paul’s poetic philosophy.” Ultimately, the
lyrics came from a more personal place, “this is what Jean-Paul’s art inspired
us to do, and we let the music speak for itself. Pink Floyd backup
vocalist Durga McBroom sings on “Being,” which will be released as a video on
November 29, the same day as the album.
The first video “Seeds” features artist Jean-Paul
Bourdier at work, painting models, was a favorite on prog radio and won “Track
of the Week” by Prog Magazine when it was released this past September.
Produced by Navon Weisberg, who helmed the project “as
a fan. I removed the technical hurdles and allowed Sepand and Oscar to focus
their energy on the music, allowing their emotions to be captured.”
The album is dedicated to the memory of
"Big" Bill Kaylor who engineered early sessions of “Perpetual
Motion Machines” and worked on the group’s second album, “In Extremis.”
Formed exactly 20 years ago in Los Angeles, Sepand and
Oscar named the band after Steve Erickson’s novel “Days Between
Stations.” The Pineapple Thief’s Bruce Soord inspired the band to work on
their music after he used some of Sepand and Oscar’s musical experiments as the
basis for “Saturday” on The Pineapple Thief’s “12 Stories Down” album.
The duo continued to work with a range of musicians on what became their
first release, “Days Between Stations,” in 2007. Their 2012
recording “In Extremis” was produced by Yes’ Billy Sherwood. In 2020
they released “Giants,” which included vocals from Durga McBroom on
“Witness the End of the World” and voted as Prog Magazine’s Track of the Week.
The band has a history of music in films-dating back
to “Radio Song” (from the debut album) licensed in the independent film
“Young, Single & Angry” in 2006 and then in 2023 in “Paul & Trisha: The
Art of Fluidity,” now featured on Apple Movies. They created the score for a
short Mexican movie, “Y Recibir Tu Aliento” in 2017.
Perpetual Motion Machines (Music For A Film)
1. Waltz for the Dead (1:53)
2. Proof of Life (2:49)
3. Seeds (2:39)
4. Unearth (4:21)
5. Intermission 3 (0:52)
6. Stone Faces (3:15)
7. Paradigm Lost (6:24)
8. Ascend (3:14)
9. Being (featuring Durga McBroom) (9:00)
