News

I would like to address my hardcore fans and frequent visitors to haldarling.com - my sincere apologies to you all for the fact that I have been utterly remiss with respect to keeping the website up to date. I'm not one for feeble excuses, but I will offer this by way of explanation. My wife is fifty-one and I'm forty-nine and we are both the youngest children of mothers who brought us into the world in their mid-forties. Over the last several years we found ourselves cast in the role of voluntary care-givers to our parents, who became ever more fragile and eventually passed on, one after another. The last of them, my mother, died on January 6th of this year. We loved them dearly, and while mistakes were made, we're satisfied that we did all we could to ameliorate their passing given the difficulty of the circumstances at hand.

Now that they are gone, a strange and unexpected sense of liberation permeates our lives. It's as if we were completely unaware of the great burden we bore. No one asked us to do this. No one had to. We acted because it was both necessary and correct to do so. Now it is done, and we are forever changed. Mary and I are closer than ever, drawn together by the now proven knowledge that one will always be there for the other. We have traveled a road that led alternatively to both perdition and sanctuary. A journey of keen highs and lows it was, tinged with pervasive human poignancy. These events have informed every aspect of our lives, our marriage, our friendships, our point of view. We have more empathy, we're less petty and self-involved, and we know so much more about what really matters in this life.

The time and attention required to properly attend to my mother's needs made it all but impossible to maintain the concentrated focus that is necessary to compose and record. A shame, too, because it was an emotionally electric period of time, rife with the fodder of musical inspiration. I now resume the life I wish to live, and the musician returns to work, in a compositional sense at least. I never did relinquish my daily rehearsal routine because I simply couldn't do that. Playing drums maintains my psychological stability like nothing else can. In that respect music was never far away, like it ever could be for an addict like myself. My studio has been massively upgraded, and I'm long on ideas for new material - thoughts filed away for future reference, much of it inspired by recent events. I hope that I can still tap in to all of that emotional intensity.

So here's to a renewed enthusiasm for life in general and music in particular. I'll do a better job of keeping things current with this website, and you keep on sending those electronic cards and letters people, - it's good to know you're out there.

HD

Today we completed a major update to the Gear Page to reflect many additions and changes to Hal's rig.

We have added new videos of Hal plaing drums in his studio. Visit the Multimedia Page for the following videos:

• Dog Dreams [2.5 MB]
• An as Yet Untitled Pattern That's a Gas to Play [4 MB]
• Walking with Don [3MB]
• Weirdest Pattern Ever [4 MB]

Today we added an article entitled A Few Thoughts on Motives and Methods... in the Multimedia section and added a new review from ProgressiveWorld.net. Additionally, the number of ways to purchase DARLING music is growing. See the Order page.

This week we updated the Photos section and added new reviews from MOVIMENTIprog, Prognaut.com, and Scott Hamrick.

We added reviews from Progressor and the Dutch Progressive Rock Page. We also added a number of links and a couple of interviews.

"Holy shit! You must check this artist out. Amazing."

--Alan Kaufman - Radio Freakout

"The second album (D2R) from Hal Darling is simply a masterpiece. Rating 15/15."

--Dominik Brueckner, Baby-Blue Prog Reviews

There is a new review at Hairless Heart Herald of D2R.

Added some new links to Boycott-RIAA.com and Internet Radio Free Kansas on the Links page.

Also, DARLING music is now available for purchase from Big Balloon Music, Syn-Phonic Music, and ZNRCDS. Those links have been added on the Order page.

Added some new pictures in the Multimedia section.

Also, added links to reprinted versions of the MusicSites.net review at several other web sites.

Added a couple of reviews from Sonic Curiosity, and Music-Sites.net.

Also, added a link to the Gentle Giant Home Page.

There are a bevy of new pictures in the Multimedia section. Photos from Darlingtown have been added in the Gear section as well.

In addition, all D2R tracks are now digitally downloadable from the net.

Finally, look for new videos of Hal playing drums, and finding other ways to act absurd in the coming month. Production will soon commence.

THIS SH*T IS BRILLIANT! THE REAL DEAL, COMPLICATED, SERIOUS, INTENSE, NO BS. ZAPPA, ELP, HAPPY THE MAN, BIT OF ZEUHL- BUT ORIGINAL. BLEW ME AWAY!

Chuck Oken, Jr. / Djam Karet

Darling creates machine-gun counterpoints of notes and drum hits with a frenzied anarchy that hasn't been heard since the most hyperactive musings of Frank Zappa. He uses his Hammond to create Emerson-like solos on amphetamines or uses his sampler to generate orchestral storms of Wagnerian sturm und drang. All of this has an avant-jazz or even RIO feel going on at the same time, ... fasten your seatbelt and prepare for a sonic roller coaster ride!

It's all extremely intricate, yet sounds as if it's being performed by a band of "free jazz" musicians who all know each other so well that they can perform together as a unit. If you haven't guessed yet, I loved this album!

My bottom line recommendation: every fan of experimental, RIO-flavored avant-prog needs to have D2R in their collection. This is an essential release.

Fred Trafton / Webmaster, Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock - View full review...

We get a lot of promotional CDs mailed to us for inclusion on our station, and I have to say with utter enthusiasm, that Hal Darling's D2R was a disc that immediately grabbed my attention. It was truly a genuinely pleasurable listening experience. D2R is at once new, different, exciting and exhilarating in it's freshness and creativity. It's not often a disc like this comes along. Listen to it at once and listen to it often!

John Garaguso / Progressive Soundscapes Internet Radio

Busy CD with many colorful changes and playing wise shows incredible agility and compositional depth...a LOT going on with clever song descriptions...Hal is VERY tight...great independent release!

Thomas Gagliardi / Gagliarchives WBZC 88.9 FM