D.E.N.I.S.

About

" What Cities Sound Like After Midnight "

Recent times have been littered with proof that DIY is alive and kicking. The Romanian band D.E.N.I.S is here to prove it.

In most of their videos you’ll notice a papier-mâché head à la Frank Sidebottom (Chris Sievey’s bizarro-petulant artistic persona, an icon of the British telly in the 80s and 90s), under which you’ll find the worst traits of two Romanian cities, bodied into a creature devoid of sense or sensibility.

Born and raised in Constanța (but raised just as much by Bucharest), frontman Daniel Boiangiu has skillfully molded the hostile experiences of urban living into a new character, giving up the gusto of his first record, ‘MY 1ST TAPE I’M DENIS’.

Released in May 2022, via Romanian indie label Supersomnic Records, ‘Miezul Nopții București’ (‘Bucharest, Midnight’), chronicles this character’s journey by powering through a variety of genres and influences, from Mac DeMarco-style balladry to acidic, brain-scrambling, fuzz-infused blues. Delivered with mania and bombast, either talky shouting or shouty talking, each lyric feels bleak and ominous, even when the instrumental’s upbeat; the second track, ‘Muzică Scrisă în N109’, depicts a man performing a lobotomy on himself while riding the night bus.

On stage, however, D.E.N.I.S. is a quintet. It’s all in-house, of course. From the cover art (made by Boiangiu himself) to their videos (one of them is AI-generated), from mixing to production, the band strays no further than its circle of close friends.

Dodging the overheated “next-big-thing” and leaving behind the indie landfill of yesteryear, D.E.N.I.S. is a fierce, promising group that might just have something novel to say about being five white Eastern-European men living in a big city, playing in a garage-rock band.