They Are Gutting A Body Of Water

About

TAGABOW began as the solo project of singer Doug Dulgarian, and is now filled out with bassist Emily Lofing, guitarist PJ Carroll, and drummer Ben Opatut. The son of a dirt track racecar driver, Dulgarian grew up in the Hudson Valley before relocating to Albany for court-mandated rehab in 2010. Soon after getting clean in 2013, Dulgarian attended his first house show. Inspired by this community of musicians self-releasing and organizing shows in makeshift spaces, he dove into DIY. “I chased that shit like I chased drugs,” Dulgarian says. “Just being in a band—touring, playing awful fucking shows.”

Their first studio LP since Lucky Styles—a 2022 release acclaimed by the likes of Post-Trash, who noted that “TAGABOW remain one of the most unique and compelling bands in underground music”—LOTTO surfaced from Dulgarian’s self-imposed challenge to put his guitar first. “I just wanted to strip all the shit back,” he says, referencing the Lucky Styles’ abundance of digital production. “All the plugins, the pedals, the vocal effects—everything about it. I just wanted to make a fucking record where the riffs really get stuck in your head.”

By abandoning digital technology and fully embracing the live-band format, LOTTO finds TAGABOW attempting to correct the course in a personal way. “In a world of perpetually increasing artifice, this record is my attempt to surface through the sea of false muck,” says Dulgarian. “It’s rife with perceivable mistakes, ebbing and flowing with the most humanity I can place on one record. “The more I utilized [technology], the softer I got. More fragile. I return again and again to that world because it’s more comfortable than my physical body. The dopamine flooding my brain. Standing in a party filled with people, staring at my phone. And in moments of clarity, I am often very aware that we’re currently watching the homogenization of art right before our very eyes. I am afraid that technology and convenience will cure the world of life.”