dark day

As a teenager in rural Pennsylvania Robin Crutchfield was fascinated with both performance art and the most esoteric edge of pop music. After making his escape to New York City in the mid-seventies, he presented several noteworthy performance pieces at the New York Avant Garde Festival, Stefan Eins' 3 Mercer Street Store and Artists' Space. Inspired by Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono Band and Lydia Lunch's Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, he made the transition into the new music of downtown Manhattan and formed the "no wave" band DNA with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori in 1977. This lineup recorded a single and 4 tracks with Brian Eno for the seminal "No New York" album.

In 1979 he left DNA to pursue a series of musical projects under the name Dark Day. The first Dark Day single, "Hands In The Dark/Invisible Man" on the Lust/Unlust label, featured Robin's singing and modified electric piano backed by Nina Canal (of the Gynecologists and more recently, UT) and Nancy Arlen (of Mars).

By the time of Dark Day's first album, "Exterminating Angel" (Lust/Unlust, 1980), the group consisted of Robin, Phil Kline, Barry Friar and a revolving lineup of artists which included Steven Brown and Peter Principle of Tuxedomoon, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Nina Canal and David Rosenbloom. During this period Dark Day performed at the Mudd Club, CGBG's and Max's Kansas City. After a tour of Europe, Robin re-formed Dark Day in 1981 as a synthesizer duo with Bill Sack and released the album "Window" (Plexus, 1982).

Over the next few years Robin resumed his work as a performance artist at such venues as Club 57 and Joseph Papp's Public Theatre. In 1985 he recreated Dark Day as an acoustic chamber ensemble performing atmospheric music in a medieval vein and released his "Darkest Before Dawn" disc in 1989.

For most of the nineteen-nineties Robin concentrated on his work in graphic design and performance art while editing the music newsletter "Quirky". In 1999 Robin utilized the new technology available to musicians and returned to the ambient and techno genres that he helped pioneer, on his disc "Strange Clockwork".

In spring of 2000, eccentric director Errol Morris contacted Robin to arrange the use of two Dark Day pieces for his "First Person" Bravo TV series.

In August of 2000, Dark Day releases its 5th album of orignial music -- "Loon" ('the mental health project') featuring 7 short instrumental works to exorcise the demons of the mind.