Album of the Week: Divide and Dissolve | Gas Lit

Where’s the outrage? Where’s the rage?

Based on current events everywhere, you’d think the creative world would be overflowing with signs of rage, new anthems pouring into the mainstream, arts & letters kicking against the pricks. [footnote 1]

I’ve been on the hunt for a heavy dose of rage and my reward was Divide and Dissolve’s Gas Lit, released on January 29, 2021.

Gas Lit is our fight for Indigenous Sovereignty, Black and Indigenous Liberation, Water, Earth, and Indigenous land given back. Gas Lit is fighting against the dispossession of our people, land, water, and spirit. Gas Lit is a call to transformation and freedom. Gas Lit seeks to make a contribution to undermining and destroying the white supremacist colonial framework.

Tshirt: Destroy White Supremacy (front) + D//D (back) available from D//D

Divide and Dissolve is Melbourne-based duo Takiaya Reed (Black & Tsalagi [Cherokee]) on saxophone, guitar, and live effects and Sylvie Nehill (Māori) on drums and live effects. Listening to Gas Lit, you’d think you were listening to an army.

“We would like to observe a radical shift in the current paradigm of complacency in regards to oppressive power dynamics, genocide, racism, white supremacy, and colonization,” the band have previously said. “To give weight and validation to voices that are traditionally misrepresented and criminalized before given a chance to speak.”

Sylvie Nehil and Takiaya Reed

Mostly wordless, Gas Lit offers echoes of early Einstürzende Neubauten’s smash coupled with drone, metal, and jazz — these are a few of my favorite things. If you are searching for a flame, D//D has a match.


  1. King James version of the Bible, Acts 26, verse 14: “And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”