The first of two nights celebrating the release of Merciless Accelerating Rhythms Vol. 2 at Union Pool. Benefiting South Brooklyn Sanctuary with merch sales benefiting PCRF.
NYC’s Pencildive is Gina De Nardo, Zach Hirsch, and Esti Lurie, and a pencildive is the quickest way to the bottom – a morbid daydream, a shock to the system and a plunge that the band conveys through distortion, feedback loops, strings and field recordings layered into a gloomy frenzy of dynamic rock. Already crowd-tested in packed punk houses, bars, and clubs across the East Coast, ‘WATCH THE WORLD’ is an arrival for Pencildive, and a rebirth as a power trio with something to say.
Backstory:
Guitarist and songwriter Gina De Nardo writes about sleepless nights, lost love, and the coming apocalypse. She released her debut EP in 2019 and followed up with a full-length album two years later, with Hirsch playing drums on both releases.
Originally hailing from the industrial city of Glens Falls, NY, De Nardo drew inspiration from her surroundings, yielding track titles “Laundromat Lady” and “Weirdos” – both instant favorites in the Albany scene’s sweaty basements and dive bars. Disturbed by her four-year-old niece’s nightmare, De Nardo also wrote “Cricket Man” and recruited friends to bring the song to life as a bloody short film. Then, after relocating to Saratoga Springs – a posh spa city with an ugly underbelly – the human body became her creative focus, with a new round of songs like “Face,” “Skin,” and “The Sweats” earning repeat plays on local radio.
De Nardo relocated again in late 2022, joining Hirsch in Brooklyn, and the two enlisted multi-instrumentalist and sound designer Ryan Hopper to play bass. Hopper, in turn, enlisted Pencildive to be the on-stage band for Entropics, an experimental play about the end of the world, with a grant-winning original score composed by Hopper. The show premiered in Chicago in May 2024. Now, Pencildive is revealing how they sound with Hopper on board – brooding, tender, explosive – in their genre-bending EP recorded at Gojira’s Silver Cord Studios in Ridgewood, Queens.