Home » Music » Song of the Day

Bayonet Tongue by Irene Aranda

From the album

Buy Album

Album Title: Tales of Freedom
Label: Self Produced
Released: 2026

Listen

Sign in to view listen count

About the Album

The Dark Deniers is an ensemble that expands Butch Morris’ conduction principles into hybrid territory combining free improvisation, rock/metal rhythmic systems and poetic text material.

The Dark Deniers - Tales of Freedom | Free Jazz Blog Review by Eyal Hareuveni

Aranda leaves the piano aside and is the mastermind, conductor, vocalist and bandleader of The Dark Deniers ensemble, a Berlin-based experimental octet featuring trumpeters Germán García and Brad Henkel, alto sax player Grgur Savić, baritone sax player Pablo Muñoz, trombonist Gerhard Gschlößl, guitarist Christian Kühn, and drummer Martial Frenzel. The Dark Deniers mix dramatic poetic texts (of John Masefield, Maya Angelou, John Donne, Lord Byron, Antonio Machado, Alfonsina Storni, Anne Bradstreet, Paul Éluard, Gilbert Chesterton, and Dylan Thomas), focusing on mortality, resistance, existential collapse, time, and transformation, with Butch Morris’ conduction principle, free jazz, avant-rock, metal, and free improvisation.

 

The Dark Deniers’ debut album, Tales of Freedom, was recorded live at Studio Zentri Fuge in Berlin in May 2026. Aranda is a capable, evocative and passionate vocalist and a commanding leader who leads this organism-like, powerful ensemble through ten pieces, beginning with the ritualist, pagan-like prayer (or provocation): “We are The Dark Deniers. Let us summon Death from a summer woman”, and soon lets this poetic phrase bloom into a funky storm. This ensemble sounds as if it searches for a primordial, pre-cosmic state of raw sound, as expressed in the aptly titled “Vocifera”, with Aranda’s effective growling vocals.

Throughout Tales of Freedom, Aranda uses the poetic texts, the language (the English, Spanish, and French ones), and the ensemble’s complex sonic palettes as material she can shape, mould, and invent anew as impossible yet intricate, organic structures, with a touching, thought-provoking, and often subversive pathos. The Dark Deniers, like the trio with Malfon and Yamasaki, also embrace chaos, but in a different approach. Aranda shapes the sonic architectures and literary texts from chaos and sheer visceral freedom, and vice versa, always flirting joyfully with fiery, explosive dynamics, danger and risk-taking, or as Aranda puts it: “play with death the way that children play with fire”.

Any round with Aranda’s music is bound to take listeners on the most unpredictable yet deeply immersive wild ride, inspire and equip us all with enough invigorating food for resisting thoughts, until, one day, Aranda and The Dark Deniers will rule the world.

 

Tracks

Thou Shalt Die; Preténdeme; I am the Hope; Bayonet Tongue; Vocifera; Double Traitors; Like the Stars' Blood; The Drive of Oil; J'écris ton nom; Best of Dark and Bright.

Personnel

Date featured

October 18, 2026

This song appears by permission of the contributing artist and/or record company. It is for personal use only; no other rights are granted or implied.

PREVIOUS / NEXT

---

About Irene Aranda