From the rampaging start of the EP, ”Eternal Remorse”, not a single note, guttural vocal, or fierce drum hit is out of place. The emerging greek artist Boris Barksdale, portraits the overall feeling of militaristic order encompasses music and vocal samples. The musical equivalent of that image, industrial society’s restless march to oblivion rendered as an infinite dance track, as aggressively vibrant as it is alienated.
For Number 5 on his Label Kluentah recrutes the Luchador Chupacabras with. 4 nasty and dirty Machine Jams straight out the gutter.
ZYX Music re-issue an Italo Disco classic from 1982, “Robot Is Systematic”, with Flemming Dalum and Hysteric remixes.
Reworked versions of a classic track, “Spacer Woman”, by Valentino Kanzyani featuring Iury Lech and Dana Ruh.
A stone cold old-school classic right here, from the year of 1984. Forged within the furnaces of electro and freestyle, Shannon’s sound was ubiquitous in post-disco clubland. Washington DC native Brenda Shannon Greene had a long career and released numerous records that soundtracked the clubbing experiences across the world, but ‘Let The Music Play’ was undoubtedly her calling card and still resonates today with it’s clipped booming 808s, bubbling acidic bassline and soaring synth lines. An absolute masterclass that rocks for the b-boys, the fly girls and anyone within 2 feet of the dancefloor.
Giorgio Records presents Simon Bennett and his beautiful track ‘I Wanna Tokyo’u’, which is reborn on vinyl again after 37 years. An elegant track, written and sung divinely by Lorenzo Lombardino aka Simon Bennett. Remixes from legendary Flemming Dalum and Marcello Giordani.
The NE-21 return to She Lost Kontrol after their first pitch-perfect 80s dark wave release in 2016. After releasing a collaboration with Donato Dozzy with the project ‘Men with Secrets’ at the beginning of the year, the duo lands on the label with their new work “In The Realm of Electricity”. The album is a collection of 8 tracks composed and recorded between 2012 and 2020 at the Sy6 studio in Boscoreale. The outcome is a perfect blend of synth pop and minimal wave, filled with icy synths, shuddering bass, and anthemic vocals, ranging from mumbled vocoder to arch talk-singing. While diverse in atmospheric scope, swells of ghostly synths circle the driving beat throughout, producing a haunting totality drenched in an ethereal midnight trance; the submerge of cold, spectral vocals sing within the darkest depths of a starry soundscape – the gloomy romanticism of low, distant vocals bursting with post-punk melancholia. The album in essence sounds unashamedly distinctive, unique and charming. Whether you fall in love with the whole act or you’re just stunned by the bizarreness of it all, one thing’s for sure – you’ll be compelled and gripped right to the infectiously smutty end.
Under exhausted lights of civil discontent the count has just began. What you parodied, what you scrutinized rears its pure gaze when punctured beyond performance. We cried for justice but instead found order, and now we face the chain. PC World comes through with a haunting EP on She Lost Kontrol to distort the view and warp the vision of industrial addicts and mutant punks with their second release “Order”, a discursive counterattack on four distinct forms of command. The South London duo disfigures the unconscious reduction of pleasure and fetish, the connective tissue between privatization and violence, the seduction of societal norms, and the neurotic tendencies of self-defeat. Like the surrender to a future shock, these four interwoven tracks are produced for the recognition of restraint and the demand for wanting more. B-side remixes of the title track “Order” come from Physical Wash (former member of High-Functioning Flesh) and Aktion Mutante (featuring members of Violent Poison and Unhuman), two additional perversions of protocol from synth-punk veterans on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mannequin Records is welcoming back Le Syndicat Électronique with a collection of lost tracks raised up from the deepest vaults of the French synth-electro pioneer. Over a period spanning almost twenty years, ”Rebuts” (the French word for ”thrown away”, ”forgotten”) is bringing back to life 8 titles that have been put aside during the different moments of creation of Le Syndicat Électronique. Founder of the seminal Invasion Planète Recordings, the first French minimal electro/wave/experimental label founded in late 1998, and heavily influenced by the work of masters like Kraftwerk/John Carpenter/Front 242, AA// is responsible for many others dark electronic / industrial / neofolk projects – to name a few: Bruta Non Calculant, Swesor Brother, La Séduction Des Innocents, It & My Computer.
WRWTFWW Records reissue Swiss cult band Grauzone’s self-titled album in an expanded 40 Years Anniversary Edition packed with the original 1981 album plus 9 extra songs, as well as extensive liner notes by Swiss music historian Lurker Grand. The pioneering band from Bern (Switzerland) had a short-lived but highly-regarded career which birthed a cult discography that still fascinates and resonates today. Consisting of core members Martin Eicher, Stephan Eicher, and Marco Repetto, and on-and-off participants Christian GT Trüssel, Claudine Chirac, and Ingrid Berney, the elusive group broke new grounds in the early 80s, experimenting with punk and industrial music, early techno sounds, minimalism, new wave, pop, and various electronics. With an innovative and polished approach to design, visuals, performance, and all around style and philosophy on top of their superb music, the constantly transforming unit developed a whole experience – the Grauzone experience: wild and unpredictable, yet sophisticated and cohesive, or as Swiss music historian Lurker Grand would call it, “an Art band with a Punk attitude”. Completely rejecting the music industry rules and refusing to play the game of promotion, touring, release schedules, and TV appearances even though they had a multi-platinum international hit with the song “Eisbär”, the band quickly disintegrated in full convention-defying glory, leaving behind an inspiring music legacy for the world to discover and discover again, one generation after the other. This extended version of their debut (and only) album beautifully crystallizes the Grauzone miracle/accident – where pop and youthful experimentation meet at (new/cold/no) wave and industrial crossroads.
Sed Blava is the Barcelona-based solo project of Daniel Boix, well known as Dj.Simplexia or also Ciutat Solitud, his ambient-industrial project. “Nit Sublim” is his first album as producer and may evoke the dark sounds from Valencia in the 80’s. But if you dive deeper, you will uncover a trove of intricate details elaborated with Sed’s touch. Ranging from catchy tunes and emotive passages to powerful dance-floor tracks, his vast music background and his long-time membership to the underground music scene should be highlighted. Both of these elements give rise to a broad spectrum of genres and influences in his music, bringing together a timeless mixture of old-school Electronic Body Music, New-Beat, Electro, Synth-Wave and even Ambient.
These tracks where included on a CD-R at the first 100 S.M. Nurse EPs “30th Anniversary 1980-1983” (Domestica, 2013) – now remastered on vinyl & including an extra remix version by Rude 66.
For the second release of KHIDI’s various artist series, the club combines together music from international pioneers Oscar Mulero and Orphx and its local, distinct residents Vulkanski and Yanamaste. All four original tracks undoubtedly illustrate and radiate the curated sound, vision and atmosphere of KHIDI. The second VA melds together diverse styles of techno, thus creating a singular and contrasting compilation.
This is the third release in Modern Cathedrals’ “Sacred Sevens” catalog, a series of EP’s released on marbled 7″ and 10″ vinyl records. The vinyl version of this release features two original tracks by ASC.
For their first collaboration on an original audio-visual artefact, Ali M. Demirel and Anthony Linell have developed a stunning and unsettling work that studies the Icelandic landscape as a motor of mythology, a snare that binds us in contradiction. Far from being an acoustic summation of the collaboration, this release is a snapshot of Linell’s musical contribution at a moment of reflection in the project’s evolution.
Originally released on CD in 1999, Astral Industries present a first vinyl issue of Monolake’s much-loved ‘Gobi’, licensed from Imbalance Computer Music. Set to the backdrop of the Gobi desert in eastern Asia, two shimmering vistas plunge the listener into a vast and deeply hypnotic nocturnal soundscape. The perennial hiss and rattle of insects float along the fresh night air in soft waves. The desert thrives with quiet activity as a westerly wind skitters across moonlit dunes, granulated folds dancing like sheets of thin silk. Tectonic plates murmur beneath the shower of stars overhead, their millennial cycles whispering of aeons past. Vividly textured and enticingly synthetic in its sound design, Gobi succeeds as a stunning piece of minimalism.
The Hipodrome Of Music 