Interview: Dhärä guitarist Austin Sandick

By Neil Shumate, OOTB Publications

Long Island, New York progressive instrumental rock quartet Dhärä just released an epic, immersive, thematic concept 12-track album that musically entices listeners: Elemental Four.

In this interview, guitarist Austin Sandick details and delves deep into the process and formation of the album as well as the visuals that are incorporated in the music videos to align with the album. Sandick also discusses overcoming struggles in the industry, celebrating their visions and goals.

With your new album Elemental Four now released, how did the record’s name originate?

Chris, our drummer, was actually writing a separate story unrelated to anything in the band; a friend mentioned the characters in that story were a common trope in storytelling called an “Elemental Four.”

It is a common storytelling theme representing the four elements in nature. We really liked that name and felt that it also fit with the characters in this album.

How did the idea evolve to make this a concept album, and what influences or personal experiences formed the sci-fi story and cinematic soundtrack?

We all being prog fans, concept albums aren’t an odd thing. Although narrative storytelling isn't universal to all of them, it’s definitely something that's fairly common. However, it is not common in a band our size.

Chris and Austin (our guitarist) are huge fans of early Genesis, when Peter Gabriel was the singer. Chris always wanted to do something like the theatrics Peter Gabriel performed in all their early shows, specifically like in The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Selling England By The Pound.

As for the soundtrack, Kay (our guitarist) is inspired by Sigur Ros, Hans Zimmer, Olafur Arnalds and all music that transmutates your environment. He had always wanted to score a cinematic piece, and jumped at the chance to create themes and interludes for this album. The songs were written by the band collectively.

Regarding the single and album’s opening track “A PLACE IN TIME, (the entities, divided),” how did you decide to interpret and present the music and story through dancing ballerinas, and was that aspect and the presentation itself (wardrobe, makeup) choreographed?

Since we have no frontman or singer, we had to find a way to tell the story, since we are all preoccupied playing our instruments. We wanted an element that shifted the focus away from us and to the story itself.

We are friends with a very talented dancer and musician Claire Cuny from the band My So Called Summer and asked her if she would be interested in choreographing it.

She was pretty excited to do it since it was so different, and also because the story was very much laid out.

Chris explained that he wanted each dancer to reflect the personality of each band member, and more importantly, the characteristics of each animal.

For instance, The Eagle has very delicate airy moves and broad strokes with her arms, much like wings. That follows across for each entity.

Claire also performed as The Conduit.

What are the four entities?

The four entities are a representation of each member of the band in a thematic sense.

In the story, they are ancient demi-gods who built the civilizations on their planet through coordination.

There is a fifth entity, The Conduit, the chief entity.

In the story it is a god of life and death. After being separated by the destructive waves being projected from an oncoming meteor, the entities strive to reunite and summon The Conduit in hopes of saving their planet. They only summon it when in great need.

Thematically, The Conduit is a representation of the band anthropomorphized; something greater than the sum of our parts.

Since forming a decade ago, what have you encountered in the music industry as the biggest struggle, and how have you overcome that?

Grabbing attention is the hardest thing to do nowadays. It’s almost impossible. We are still trying to overcome that; however, we feel we made something that will turn heads and get some attention.

Being a progressive instrumental band isn’t necessarily the first thing you think of or listen to when you look at the Billboard Top 100.

Though, what’s really most important to us is to just make great art and music. We feel we set a standard we can be proud of.

On the other side of things, what’s been the most rewarding thing through your music endeavors?

In general, being able to reach that flow state, where we collectively embody the music is the most rewarding experience—everything else is nice, but secondary.

Specific to Elemental Four, we were profoundly impressed by the diligence and reverence with which the ballerinas and our crew (West Industry Studios) treated this project; we are forever grateful!

What are your goals and ambitions for 2026?

We are excited to share this very special body of work with as many people as we can—be that through shows, word of mouth or the internet.

Watch

“A PLACE IN TIME, (the entities, divided)”