THE SOUND

Imagine a party, where Gary Numan is married to The Orb, who is slow dancing with Massive Attack, while Oum Kalthoum is French kissing Prince and finally, Daphne Oram is mixing the drinks. Produced over two years in the Holykuti Studios with singers & performers from Ireland, Iraq, Pakistan, UK & Lebanon. They Dance in the Dark largely references 80’s & 90’s electronic dance music. The height of hooky, dark electronic anthems with underlying post-colonial queer narratives. Realising her true introversion RENU worked through the philosophy of playing Tablas in mind: creating big & infinite sounds with a minimum set up. 

Review by The Quietus UK

What sets this record apart is the deftness of touch and the musical sensibility that permeates it. They Dance In The Dark is not like other dance records, and its delicacy and finesse make it an enchanting and unusual listen.(…) (Renu) Hossain presides over each release more like a director or curator, leading from the back. The vocalists and collaborators on this album are like passengers traversing her singular world in the early hours. Read more ->

THE VISUAL

The THEY DANCE IN THE DARK visuals are filmed, edited & mixed live by Dada award winner Yue Wang and conceived/directed by RENU and Salma Arzouni, those very visuals create a world, a cocoon, a womb ready to envelope the audience into the world of They Dance in the Dark

THE PERFORMANCE

An electronic queer dance odyssey with live percussion and live electronics. A plasmic electrical journey which undulates and ebbs its way through a cosmos of mixed media. The body performances by supernatural-queer characters fall into a perfect composition of cultivated weirdness. The live visuals have been specially prepared for the show for over 2 years. Timeless but unquestionably current.