Explosive in its humanity, A Profound Non-Event breathes with all the heart of a well-loved home. A curious collection of bric-a-brac, tenderness, love, grief, and meaning, Daily Toll’s debut album sits comfortably in all of its contradictions.
Holding little-to-no regard for convention, the Sydney band traverses both concept and tone with a perceptible sense of creative emancipation. Initially a collaboration between self-taught multihyphenate artist Kata Szász-Komlós and musician Jasper Craig-Adams, A Profound Non-Event adds Tom Stephens on drums and vocals. Together, they form a union of distinct creative dispositions, through relationships that have bloomed with the push and pull of shared artistic practice.
True to the band’s lineage and D.I.Y. ethos, every element feels sculpted and tactile. Hand-illustrated cover art and collage, poetry through a karaoke mic, and a toy frog used as percussion—delivered like a gift. The album begins with the hauntingly prescient “Another World”, a sludgy, psychedelic tinged offering that submerges us in the in-between.
"We are all kin
Thrown into stories with no beginning
Aren’t we all just fumbling forward to another morning
I’d rather have your hand in mine
To have failed is to have tried"
Whilst starting in a dream-like haze, A Profound Non- Event wakes us quickly, walking steadfast with clarity towards the album’s centrepiece. ‘On ‘Killincs’, the poetry of Szász-Komlós is woven like a braid throughout a bed of motion and texture. Thick, chugging bass and angular guitars crash in and out like urgent waves, creating space for Szász-Komlós’ explorations of mundanity to really linger.
Where the record’s first half nods to a lineage of post-punk, its second act serves as a counterweight in levity, hinting at the intimacy of folk with the shutters left open. From ‘My Sister's Loom’ (an instrumental piece that feels like a photographic portrait crafted with sound) through to the closing track ‘The Light’, this second half finds a resoluteness. Like that of a life: beautiful, heavy (at times), but whole in its embrace of finitude.
At its heart, A Profound Non-Event exudes an undeniable connectedness to the world and the people within it, imploring us to examine our own personal and social responsibility through subtle and empathetic social critique. A collection of powerful observations on the human spirit that remains—in all of its dissonance—resolutely hopeful.
"I know where I have started
I know where I will end"
Words by Harrie Hastings