In Aeternam Vale – Dust Under Brightness LP [MW036]

Minimal Wave return to their self-professed “First French love” In Aeternam Vale with a second LP-shaped trawl through the band’s sizeable archive of cassette only releases. The Brooklyn imprint first introduced us to the work of the hugely prolific Lyon band with an eponymous LP of remastered material in 2009, and Dub Under Brightness proves to be just as important a release. The label points to an article on the band originally published by the Douche Froide magazine in 2002, where the journalist nails their appeal in the opening gambit – “There are bands that have been acting ruthlessly in the shadow for years, in a completely confidential manner, then one day chance (but does chance exist?) makes you find one of their recordings, listen to it, and at that moment you could kick yourself for not having discovered these soundscapes earlier and you try to find all of them”. If you haven’t indulged in the sounds of In Aeternam Vale yet, this eight track selection makes for a perfect introductory primer.

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In Aeternam Vale – Dust Under Brightness LP [MW036]

In Aeternam Vale – Dust Under Brightness / Highway Dark Veins [MW03612]

The Minimal Wave label present this 12″ accompaniment to Dub Under Brightness, the freshly released trawl through the cassette-only archives of their favourite French act of the 1980s, In Aeternam Vale. The full unedited 12-minute version of the title track is presented here, pressed on a thick slab of vinyl at 45rpm for the DJs and is complemented by “Highway Dark Veins”, a brilliant example of proto industrial techno. If you are not familiar with the A Side, it presents the Lyon group led by Laurent Prot at their lolloping finest, a hypnotic sideways Minimal Wave throbber replete with cavernous and near indecipherable vocals and industrially charged synth waves. It’s the B Side that makes this release all the more special, sounding every bit like the paranoid martian techno opus that inspired the Mills series Something In The Sky and was a definite highlight of Ron Morelli’s descent into Industrial Nihilism on a recent Beats In Space show.

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In Aeternam Vale – Dust Under Brightness / Highway Dark Veins [MW03612]

Degada Saf – No Inzro [MNQ009CD]

Degada Saf was a transgressive-dada-ist musical combo coming from Veneto, Italy. Degada Saf played a synth-electronic music, a kind of involved no-disco with no-sense lyrics in esperanto. Their music suggests a peculiar mixture of post-modernism synthesized electro assaults, new wave’s imaginative minimalism and pop art aesthetic vision. “No Inzro” makes constant interferences between rigorous avant-gardism, alternative music styles and colorfully plastic electro pop. The spectrum of musical imagination reveals a lot of good surprises, notably with the opening theme “La Rhumba de Shang Hai” which directly gives the tonality of the entire album: kitschy retro-popish ambiences based on dancing minimal hypno pulses and efficiently cold melodies. A groovy and captivating electro experience and a pretty decent introduction to the band’s very own musical universe.

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Degada Saf – No Inzro [MNQ009CD]

Inhalt – Vehicle EP [DE024]

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Dark Entries presents the the debut EP “Vehicle” from San Francisco based synth trio Inhalt. Consisting of European and East Coast natives– Matia Simovich, Bryan Gibbs, and Philip Winiger– Inhalt’s core operative strategy is of sonic fidelity and integrity rather than nostalgia. In the “Vehicle” EP the brutality of the analogue transistor rhythm section meets the sincerity of the human voice.

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Inhalt – Vehicle EP [DE024]

Dominik von Senger – Only Love Can Take Us Home [CHANNEL023]

Spicy krautrock-like melodramatics by DVS, introcately refining the genre. Especially the beatless version on the flip illustrates some special beauty and nuance. Ably assisted by Thomas Bullock, this compellingly motorik, spaced out song punctuated by heavily effected blasts of guitar, sounds like a lost classic. The B side features Mix 2, a beatless version that lays the vocal and guitar elements bar.

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Dominik von Senger – Only Love Can Take Us Home [CHANNEL023]