# JOE CARDAMONE Elaborates Why Love Is Hell On 19-Track ‘QUARENTINA (EXPANDED)’

- Link: https://www.nyrdcast.com/joe-cardamone-elaborates-why-love-is-hell-on-19-track-quarentina-expanded/
- Published: 2024-11-21T15:30:00-06:00
- Author: Eugene Tierney

### **JOE CARDAMONE**⏎ **Reaffirms Love Is HellWith “Expanded” Version of His Magnum Opus _QUARENTINAvia Sonic Ritual_

**NOVEMBER 19, 2024 (New York, NY) — **If there is one singular truth in the world,
it’s that **Love Is Hell, **and one person decided not to fight it and instead capture
its essence and craft it into a work of art. Formerly of punk agitators/heroes **
The Icarus Line **and one half of the dark disco duo **Dark Mark vs. Skeleton Joe**(
with the late Mark Lanegan), **Joe Cardamone **splays out this simple universal 
truism with the release of the expanded version of his Covid-borne magnum opus, _**
QUARENTINA (EXPANDED) **_(now available _via _**Sonic Ritual**).

Originally released on June 1, 2021 in the midst of the pandemic, _Quarentina _was
a 19-track master stroke that plumbed the depths of loss and grief, fully-exposed
in its raw, visceral glory. The expanded version adds an additional twelve tracks.

[[

**Joe Cardamone**
Photo credit: Travis Keller

Slumming through life after a recent difficult breakup at the time, Cardamone was
practically forced into the studio to bottle the vacillating emotions and commit
them to tape. “I was sitting on my back porch during the Covid winter, wondering
where my life was going wrong,” he painfully reminisces.

“I was merely existing, absorbing slow sustained waves of grief and hanging with
a good friend [producer/engineer **Michael Musmanno**] who was there to check on
me. While I was outlining the forensics of my disaster, he stopped me and pointed
to the studio in the yard. ‘Go in there and sing about it,’ he ordered me.” 

The result was an experimental collection of 19 mini-songs that is an immersive 
dive into the collective paranoia and high strangeness of life in Los Angeles during
the pandemic Sincere, surprisingly empathetic and blazingly raw, _Quarentina _tells
of the dissolution of a relationship, reinforcing that “Love Is Hell” trope.

Cardamone assembled the _pièce de resistance _into a cohesive whole, held together
oh-so-precariously by a thin thread of hope. “They were super brief pieces, mostly
a minute or less,” he explains. ‘Sing whatever comes out, don’t listen back, and
move on,’ he told himself. “Over the next two days, I recorded in a sort of fever…
I put the whole mess on tape. On the third day, I finally listened to it. It was
not without obvious flaws (nearly every vocal was a first take, and the words were
off-the-dome), but there was something rather beautifully honest about it.. something
cringe about the songs too, but I liked that.”

_Quarentina _was accompanied by a companion film of vignettes, matching the intensity
and brief flashes of the original audio. Joined by friend and fellow musician **
Carré Calloway **(_Queen Kwong_), who acted as  one half of the doomed relationship,
Cardamone portrays its dissolution in the form of an episodic, black and white, 
modern _noir_. Based on real life events, the film is intermingled with dreamy surrealism
that comes in like a fever dream.

Written and filmed where some of the actual events took place, it tells the story
of a couple being crushed under the weight of their own demons and the prospect 
of the end times, a relationship dissolving over the course of the quarantine, shown
through an intimate, tender and harrowing snapshot of the lonely isolation during
those trying times. 

“We all met to shoot once or twice a week, keeping the circle tight with filmmakers**
Travis Keller **and **Jacob Mendel **being the only other people on set for most
of it,” he remembers.  “We all had a purpose and a goal to drop one song or episode
every week.  The deeper we got into the mini saga, the more we needed additional
music.”

[[

**Joe Cardamone and Queen Kwong**
Photo credit: Darian Zahedi

The expanded version of _Quarentina _collects the full breadth of music with the
additional 12 tracks that were written and created for the film. “I would run down
to the studio and bang out a quick track to complete whatever visual we were on,”
Cardamone says of the additional music.  

“Some of my favorite musical moments from the project didn’t make it on the initial
release, ‘**What would I do?**’ and ‘**Leviathan**’ being two of my faves. I guess
that’s what inspired us to drop an expanded edition; some of the best tunes from
the project were not available until now.”

To accompany the release of the expanded edition, the final full-length feature 
version of _Quarentina _will be screened in December 2024 for the first time at **
LOST ANGELES **(1457 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA)**, **Cardamone’s collective’s
art space in Los Angeles. Details on the screening will be posted [**HERE **](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=a897a3db72&e=615f2b8493)
soon.

Looking back at the dark and dreary times, Cardamone has a startling epiphany. “
Those three days were the best I had felt in weeks,” he beams, reflecting on the
creative explosion he had in 2021. “I didn’t want it to end. This was my life raft
now keeping me afloat with the help of my best friends, who were also melting away
under the radiation of Covid lockdowns.”

_**Quarentina (Expanded) **_is now released by **Sonic Ritual **at [https://hypeddit.com/btywom](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=38bc4442b3&e=615f2b8493)
and on [Soundcloud](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=e722d2cf6a&e=615f2b8493).

**_QUARENTINA (EXPANDED)_**
Track Listing

[[

**_QUARENTINA (EXPANDED)_**

 1.  Laws
 2.  Dead Sky
 3.  Flowers
 4.  Nine of Swords
 5.  New Moon
 6.  Lisbon
 7.  Count In Sevens
 8.  Nite Theme (Rock n Roll)
 9.  Crushed Skull
 10. Sabbath
 11. Yeshua
 12. Cluster B
 13. Day Six
 14. Red Flag
 15. Dec Piano
 16. Revelations
 17. The Tower
 18. Baby Blue
 19. Ur So Cool 2
     **Additional tracks**
 20. Time Machine
 21. The Heat
 22. Seven in Heaven
 23. Leaving
 24. When U Kno
 25. I Kno
 26. She’s on the Floor
 27. What Would I Do?
 28. Smoking In Front of a Burning House
 29. Leviathan
 30. Ending
 31. Closing Remarks

**ABOUT JOE CARDAMONE**
Los Angeles native artist Joe Cardamone has lived a few 
lifetimes while leaving a wiry dent in the global underground music and film scenes.
The band that Joe fronted for 17 years, **The Icarus Line**, formed in East Los 
Angeles in 1998. Over the course of six albums the punk agitators became an underground
phenomenon and the most dangerous, if not the greatest, punk group of their generation.

The cult band never gave up. Performances at the _Reading _and _Leeds Festivals 
_in front of 30,000+ fans, multiple appearances on the legendary **John Peel **show,
criss-crossing the US in a van opening a stadium tour for **A Perfect Circle **and**
The Cult **and a UK tour with **Primal Scream **are just some of the “greatest hits”
of a legend loaded with nearly mythic live performances and chaos.

But it was the death of guitarist and original member **Alvin DeGuzman **in 2017
following a long battle with cancer, which was the actual end of The Icarus Line(
a demise recently depicted in **Michael Grodner**’s independent film “**The Icarus
Line Must Die**” which is now streaming on Vudu, Trubi, AppleTV, and Amazon).

The following year Joe released his solo debut, the frenzied **_Holy War _**album
and film on his own imprint American Primitive. Cardamone’s new approach was a modern
one man show that forged R&B and crushing electronics with the combative spirit 
of his formative punk years.

While crafting a pair of follow up albums in 2020 the world stopped and the _QUARENTINA
_project emerged in response. Outside of his work as an artist Joe has produced 
and collaborated with some of the greatest artists of our time including **Mark 
Lanegan, Ian Astbury, Warren Ellis **(_Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds_) and **James
Williamson **(_The Stooges_).

**Social Media:**
[Website](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=95e750aeae&e=615f2b8493)
| [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/joe_cardamone/) | [TikTok](https://reybee.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f67b4587af2b2ef9aa80ed984&id=5f060c70c6&e=615f2b8493)

[⌊Reybee Inc⌉⌊Reybee Inc⌉[

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