The most acoustic sounding of the Drownbeat albums, The End and the Beginning takes a hopeful look at the never-ending cycle of life.

From its inception, The End and the Beginning was meant to be the most hopeful and acoustic-sounding Drownbeat album yet, and that is exactly what it has become. Unlike the first two Drownbeat releases (which utilized many different songwriters and vocalists), The End and the Beginning was written by only two people: Dan Milligan and Bill Acuña of Chicago’s Despotic Hall of Fame. In addition, the lengthy list of performers was replaced with a small group of musicians, giving it a much more intimate and band-like feeling than the first two albums. And while it’s not necessarily a “concept album” in the traditional sense, the songs on the album are very tightly bound together with a common theme. The result is Drownbeat’s most consistent musical offering to date.

The Colors Of the Night uses everything from glitchy electronic beats to walls of reverb-laden guitars to tell the story of our search for purity in a world that is becoming increasingly complex.

Two years after the release of their debut album, To Be Something More, Drownbeat is back with their second full-length album, The Colors of the Night.

From the haunting, atmospheric sounds of ambient guitars melding with lonely keyboards to the steady pulsing electro bass, fans of To Be Something More will recognize many of the elements that originally defined the Drownbeat sound…however, The Colors of the Night was intentionally crafted to be a much tighter album than its predecessor.

Written in a very short span of time, The Colors of the Night deals with searching for simplicity and order in a world that is constantly threatening to become too complex to handle. Accordingly, the music on the album constantly ebbs and flows between simplicity and chaos, at times looming large enough to drown out the words of the voclists. All of the songs on the new album are obviously connected lyrically and thematically, but they are also quite literally connected together, creating an album that was crafted to be enjoyed much more as a whole, as opposed to individual pieces.

Drownbeat was formed by Chicago-area producer Dan Milligan in 2014, and it features a rotating cast of some of Chicago’s finest musicians and vocalists. Drawing from influences such as Massive Attack, NIN, Digital Daggers, Depeche Mode and Crosses, Drownbeat’s sound is strongly anchored in moody electronic music; however, the frequent use of live instruments expands the sound beyond the realm of simple electronica. A listen through Drownbeat’s catalog reveals layers of subtler influences, such as Slowdive, Porcupine Tree, The The, Zero-7, and at times, Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd.

Dark, introspective, insomnia-inspired songs for the lost, the lonely and the forsaken.

Cinematic. Ambient. Haunting. Atmospheric. These are some of the words that people have been using to describe Drownbeat; a dark alternative pop/electronica act formed by Chicago-area producer Dan Milligan in 2014. Along with Milligan, Drownbeat features a rotating cast of some of Chicago’s finest musicians and vocalists.

Drawing from influences such as Massive Attack, NIN, Digital Daggers, Depeche Mode and Crosses, Drownbeat’s sound is strongly anchored in moody electronic music; however, the frequent use of live instruments expands the sound beyond the realm of simple electronica. A listen through Drownbeat’s debut album, To Be Something More, reveals layers of subtler influences, such as Slowdive, Porcupine Tree, The The, Zero-7, and at times, Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd.

Drownbeat: dark, introspective, insomnia-inspired songs for the lost, the lonely and the forsaken.