NEW!Black Pig Suite EP, available through Dorianwood.com!
BOLKA is the debut album by Dorian Wood.
BOLKA can be purchased on CD and MP3.
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"A beautiful, baroque work." - LA WEEKLY
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"Moving.heartbreaking." - GO MAG (Spain)
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"Passionate and affecting, even frightening at times." - AMERICANA UK
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"BOLKA is a tour-de-force of eclectic, hypnotic folk-rock. Jaw-dropping beauty." (20 Top Albums of 2008) - OUT IN THE CITY (UK)
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"Dorian's music exists in a time-space continuum all its own." - SIGNAL TRIBUNE
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"Wry, wistful and deliciously eerie, BOLKA's a valentine to the brokenhearted." - INSTINCT MAG
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"Dorian Wood's songs takes listeners on an emotional, baroque rollercoaster ride. Indeed.BOLKA demonstrates his gift for (dramatic) melody and harkens back to Tin Pan Alley, even Vaudevillian days. The lyrics on his songs are emotionally charged, literate and riveting, like a great novel." - GROUPEE.COM
Los Angeles-based artist and musician Dorian Wood travels comfortably between the worlds of folk/soul and experimental/spiritual. His debut album, BOLKA (Bulgarian for “pain”) showcased his songwriting and vocal strengths in a whirlwind of horns, harps, accordions and a Bulgarian women’s choir, referred to by the LA Weekly as "a beautiful, baroque work."
His live performances are equally epic: from street corners to concert halls in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico and the UK, Dorian is often accompanied by several-to-all members of the Los Angeles-based avant-garde orchestra, Killsonic (of which he is also a vocalist, composer and accordionist). He has curated several multi-media events: ORGANIKA I and II at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California, and Killsonic Presents, an ongoing monthly series presenting debuted works by those within (and without) the Killsonic collective.
Born in Echo Park, California, Dorian began his musical education at a very early age, continuing his studies at Conservatorio de Castella in Costa Rica, and eventually returning to Los Angeles. Dorian perfected his style in southern California with two short-lived but critically-acclaimed projects: the space-rock band The Dorian Wood Guilt Trip, and the experimental gospel choir The Northern Embers. He continues to collaborate with eclectic musicians in his individual performances, including the Killsonic Women’s Choir And Amplified Percussion Ensemble.
Dorian's latest release, Black Pig Suite, is a 4-song download-only EP released in 2009 featuring 17 musicians and a Christmas lawn ornament. He is currently working on his follow-up to BOLKA, entitled Rattle Rattle, which will be released in its entirety in 2010. Dorian lives in Los Angeles.
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"The androgynous emotionality of Wood’s singing voice lends itself to the demanding theatricality of [his] lyrics, arrangements and production. The nakedness of a lover’s need and the wide-eyed madness that ensues when that need is not met twine around one another." - LA Weekly
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"Dorian’s voice is evocative of those persons, places and things in your mind that ring like cultural archetypes (the carnival ring leader who knows everyone’s secrets, the fool lamenting at the moon, the gregarious saloon piano player), but these apparently familiar characters he seems to be depicting yank at the proverbial rug under you and demonstrate his dynamic cultural literacy. Though they draw from different sources, his songs’ emotional roots are firmly planted in his own experience." - Signal Tribune
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"Wood unleashes gospel-infused wails and testimony that bring the audience…to a frenzy.” – The Advocate
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"Dorian Wood is an instigator extraordinaire. A shape-shifter. A subtle court jester posing as a harmless house pet. An inspiring addition to the freakish world we now live in.a true artist in the purest sense of the word. Fearless, confident, filled with passion. His songs are beautiful without being pretty, well orchestrated, and creepy almost to the point of being masochistic, all the while continuing to work under the guise of 'folk music'." - Citizen LA
