No Surrender | About

No Surrender is a pioneering alternative music crew from NYC's indie underground, starting out in the early 00s on the art rap and electronic scenes. Their own albums, and collaborations have been hailed internationally by VICE, MTV, SPIN, Rolling Stone (Italy), Vogue (France), Mojo, NME, Time Out London, and dozens of other outlets. The band originally comprised of vocalist Gnomad (Patrick Donawa) and Eddie Steeples, both regulars on the open mic scene with residencies at spots like The Black Cat in Williamsburg. Another founding member, Darius VanSluytman was also a member of Mike Ladd's Infesticons with Creature of Rebelmatic and UK emcee Juice Aleem on Big Dada/Ninja Tune. During their tenure, the group recorded with Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio, Raz Mesinai (Badawi), Dub Gabriel, Vast Aire (Cannibal Ox), FreQ Nasty and producer Johan Karlberg (The Very Best, Baaba Maal). Things slowed down a bit when Steeples landed his iconic role as "Crabman" on NBC's My Name Is Earl. But, in 2010 they added former Tricky singer Costanza Francavilla to the mix, and the group exploded a little too quickly, finding acclaim with their 2011 album Medicine Babies, a growing audience overseas, and no budget to reach them. The band began drifting apart, and by 2013, had pretty much disappeared. 


In 2016,  Darius produced Altars, a sound installation for sculptor Afruz Amighi, leading to a collaboration for The Frist Art Museum in July of 2018, where Darius composed and performed 30 minutes of original electronic music, accompanied by harp, violin, cello and spoken word. This reignited his interest in reimagining No Surrender. More on that soon. First stop, knocking a few things out with our pals Dead Tooth...to get us ready for our re-entry. It's 2020 after all. Might as well do something crazy.