De-Bons-en-Pierre – Card Short of a Full Deck [DE301]

Dark Entries’ resident scuzzmasters De-Bons-en-Pierre return with the “Card Short of a Full Deck” EP, featuring six tracks of their signature sludge. In 2016, Beau Wanzer and Maoupa Mazzocchetti fused forces in order to infect the world with their mutant analog strain, a noxious hybrid of 80’s DIY cassette electronics and 90’s Birmingham techno. Card Short of a Full Deck follows 2017’s Crepes EP and 2019’s EP No. 1 and EP No. 2, all released via Dark Entries. Their latest salvo features six tracks composed for a live performance in 2019. While a damaged sense of whimsy has pervaded their previous work, Card Short sees the duo ramping up the absurdity to obscene levels. Skittering rhythms dance over ghoulish basslines and haunting, rave-evocative chords on cuts “Le Râle du Mâle Alpha” and “Puddle Points”. Elsewhere, like on “Card Short of a Full Deck” and “Accidental Surgeries”, contorted vocals battle careening synths amidst post-apocalyptic waste.

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De-Bons-en-Pierre – Card Short of a Full Deck [DE301]

Beau Wanzer / Hieroglyphic Being – 4 Dysfunctional Psychotic Release & Sonic Reprogramming Purposes Only [NATURAL060]

Natural Sciences Recs marks its 60th release with a split 12″ from Beau Wanzer and Hieroglyphic Being: two cult names from Chicago’s underground releasing on record for the first time, with Wanzer’s hybrid industrial rap alongside Jamal’s wired space ritual.

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Beau Wanzer / Hieroglyphic Being – 4 Dysfunctional Psychotic Release & Sonic Reprogramming Purposes Only [NATURAL060]

Ombra 2022

The 2022 edition of the Ombra Festival will start tomorrow in Barcelona, with a location change. The festival program was suppose to take place for the last time at UTOPÍA 126, but the new owners of the location canceled in September Ombra’s reservation. Probably this beautiful industrial relic will make space for something more modern and cost efficient construction.

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Ombra 2022

Ombra Festival 2022 – Barcelona

The 2022 edition of the Ombra festival will take place from November 24 to 27 in Barcelona. Ombra is a project born from the hand of agency Ombra Agency and label Oraculo Records with the aim of creating a meeting place for lovers of analogue and avant-garde sounds that do not fit in the current cultural offer.

Continue reading “Ombra Festival 2022 – Barcelona”
Ombra Festival 2022 – Barcelona

V​A – Crime Violente Vol​.​5 [UNR009]

Up North Records presents volume 5 of Crime Violente featuring tracks by Anna Funk Damage, B1980, Beau Wanzer, E.L.I., Happy707, LBEEZE, Religius Order, Rudiment, Violet Poison and more.

V​A – Crime Violente Vol​.​5 [UNR009]

Mutant Beat Dance – No Comfort For Control [NAT020]

The triad of Mutant Beat Dance brings an entirely different approach with numerous vocal appearances and raw funkiness. The kind of sound that brings images of dark and dirty city streets to mind that would not feel out of place as the soundtrack for an cult 80s film about about street gangs i.e. the Duke from Escape From New York…or Style Wars. The Wave and House sounds are present but then there’s distorted walking bass guitars and snapping drums give it this more swampy sound, and also the more punk rock sound of The Stooges or The Cramps. This release is the feeling of listening to a band and not just some guys who are making electronic music. This is an excellent juxtaposition of styles that is effective in both manners.

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Continue reading “Mutant Beat Dance – No Comfort For Control [NAT020]”
Mutant Beat Dance – No Comfort For Control [NAT020]

VA – Palace Of Memory Where Nostalgia Is Fear [PSR007]

VARIOUS - Palace Of Memory Where Nostalgia Is Fear (featuring Container, Privacy, Beau Wanzer, DJ Richard, Kluentah etc.)

Always hot on the hard-as-steel plates and murky subterranean atmospheres, Public System turns in a haunted double package from the crypt. Spanning hi-octane indus bullets, half-baked mutant salvos and shadow-clad juicers from a host of reputed names and rabid underdogs, this new comp collates ruff’n’tuff joints from gritty techno don Container, genre-unbound explorer E-Saggila, Berlin’s electro arsonist Privacy, acid-spitting hydra DJ Loser x Penelopes Fiance, basement guerilla Yabboq Penuel alias Le Syndicat Electronique, neo-punk beat thrasher Crave, Yves Tumor collaborator and sine-wave crusher Anthem, expert circuit dissector Beau Wanzer, Liquid G as remixed by Mick Wills, Night Gaunt’s Lower Tar, occult machine funk preacher Maenad Veyl, DJ Chupacabras under new guise 110, soundwaves cross-pollinator DJ Richard, vibrant mood-scapist Gavilán Rayna Russom, as well as label boss Myn going ubiquitous with studio fellows Kluentah as Myntha, and NYC’s R Gamble under their Fade Accompli moniker. A much desirable feast of raw, unhinged, all-round spine-tingling jams for both inside and outside the club.

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VA – Palace Of Memory Where Nostalgia Is Fear [PSR007]

VA – How Sick Do You Get When You Look At Yourself? [LIES159]

L.I.E.S. Records Various Artists compilation “How Sick Do You Get When You Look At Yourself?” with tracks from 51717, Bad News, Beau Wanzer, Chupacabras, Daniel Holt, December, Delroy Edwards, Entro Senestre, Innsyter, JT Whitfield, Krikor, S. English, Teste, TV.OUT and Willie Burns.

VA – How Sick Do You Get When You Look At Yourself? [LIES159]

De Bons en Pierre – EP No. 1 / 2 [DE236/DE237]

Dark Entries presents two new EPs from De Bons en Pierre, the duo of Beau Wanzer & Maoupa Mazzocchetti. Beau Wanzer spends the majority of his days sifting through paraffin embedded animal tissues and reading old issues of Fangoria, occasionally breaking his monotonous routine to record in various fits and bursts. As well as solo material, he is also in numerous projects including Streetwalker, Mutant Beat Dance, Civil Duty, and Corporate Park. Maoupa Mazzocchetti is the pseudonym of Florent Mazzocchetti, a French producer based in Brussels. His sonic vision is one which constantly straddles the line between wild experimentation and rhythmic compatibility, drawing influence from early concrète, 80’s tape scene and Birmingham school techno. After working together on the ‘Crepes’ EP that we released in 2017, De Bons en Pierre reunited for a two day recording session in Brussels. The duo recorded 13 tracks that we’ve split across 2 EPs with 6 tracks on ‘EP No. 1’ and 7 tracks on ‘EP No. 2’. Beau says, “We hooked everything up and just pushed play. We didn’t really discuss much about the process….it was very ‘spur of the moment’.” The equipment set up included a Roland TR-808, TR-606, SH-101, CR-78, CR-8000, two Syncussions and effects. Each EP contains 25 minutes of dance floor perversions that tackle an array of rhythmic forms. Sludgy synths, serrated percussion and viscous distortion goops over leviathan rhythms.

part 1 / part 2

De Bons en Pierre – EP No. 1 / 2 [DE236/DE237]

Alessandro Adriani – Embryo [SA035]

Alessandro Adriani, the Mannequin Records label boss, will release next month a new album called ‘Morphic Dreams’ on Lucy’s Stroboscopic Artefacts. The album is preceded by the EP ‘Embryo’, an immersive four-track micro-odyssey spanning across jagged ambient scopes, unmapped acidic grounds and further leftfield-friendly sonic territories.

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Alessandro Adriani – Embryo [SA035]

VA – Eminent Domain [LIES125]

Massive 22 track compilation spanning three vinyl lps and one 45 showcasing a wide scope of subterranean American electronics. This is just a small look into the the massive contemporary underbelly of odd-ball sonic bottom dwellers making noise across the 50 states. These tranmissions come from remote government outposts, booming overcrowded metropolis’, outskirts of America’s South and even the long forgotten muck and sleaze of Northeastern suburbia. This America in its glory, a nasty place rife with tension and division, ready to boil over into complete chaos at any given moment and these are artists that walk amongst it. Absorbing it all and spitting it out, moments of clarity and tranqilty go head to head with dramatic clashes, attempting to make sense of it all or simply to isolate oneself and escape this morbid world. A definitive sonic document of modern life in a nation on the decline.

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VA – Eminent Domain [LIES125]

Mutant Beat Dance – Mutant Beat Dance [RHM027]

Mutant Beat Dance has returned to Rush Hour. The debut album from renegade trio Mutant Beat Dance  (Traxx, Beau Wanzer and Steve Summers) takes the wild and free sound of Chicago’s Music Box era into the 21st Century. Over 25 tracks the album mines an oft cited but rarely understood ground at the intersection of Post-Punk, Minimal Wave, Industrial, Disco Dub, EBM and proto-House / early-House. “Mutant Beat Dance.” is an epic journey into a classic American ideology that had its apex in Chicago. Traxx has been working on this concept in various forms throughout the last decade on release for Discos Capablanca, Rong Music, Hour House Is Your Rush Records, L.I.E.S. (Long Island Electrical Systems), Light Sounds Dark, Rush Hour and his own Nation label finally refining his concept into its most thoroughly developed explored on this the debut M.B.D album that was started in 2015. Mutant Beat Dance was originally a duo made up of Traxx, and self-described weirdo, Chicagoan Beau Wanzer. Given the scope of the new project it became logical and necessary to expand the unit to include its newest member Brooklyn based Steve Summers. Together this hard-working trio has completed an album with an enormous diversity of song styles unlike anything they have ever done before. Unique in its musical range and content from obscure electronics with subliminal messages to funk laden machine grooves, industrial soundscapes, Detroit dirge, cryptic ankle bitter anthems and beyond this is a genre-bending challenging epic of an album.

vinyl / CD

Mutant Beat Dance – Mutant Beat Dance [RHM027]

Transformation / Beau Wanzer – Kozmik / Orbit [KODE05]

A split release on Nation’s sublabel, Kode. Two exclusive tracks from Transformation & Beau Wanzer. Transformation’s 2nd document of their time in the makeshift studio for another 15 minute psychedelic slo-trip continuing steps in creativity, gaining access to various pieces of musical equipment, hitting the garage, practicing and recording in hopes of making it, entitled “Sketch 4”. Over the past year Beau Wanzer’s output has been fueled by deformed synths, grim vocals, and hard hitting drums more suited for dungeon dance floors than heady home listenings. For his next release he offers an icy subdued drum machine workout. ‘Oklahoma 3’ was recorded in the winter of 2009 while visiting his parent’s house over the holidays. A combination of Roland drum machines, sampled jazz tones, and ambient atmospheres the track sets a tone for a bleak winter in the countryside.

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Transformation / Beau Wanzer – Kozmik / Orbit [KODE05]

VA – Waves Of The Future [MNQ100]

Mannequin’s 100th – a compilation looking forward featuring an international and serious cast. The modern synthwave scene would be significantly poorer without the keen ear and tireless efforts of the Mannequin label run by Alessandro Adriani. Mannequin continues to go on exploratory missions to find the best and most relevant aspects of genres like acid, industrial, EBM, post-punk, coldwave and still more. Which brings us to Mannequin’s newest project and 100th release overall: the Waves of the Future double LP compilation, which itself is not a conventional retrospective collection. Case in point – none of the artists appearing on this collection have put out their own releases on Mannequin yet, despite acting as Mannequin’s unofficial ambassadors (via DJ sets and other means). This makes the set even more compelling rather than less so, since it shows how Mannequin fits into a larger picture that includes other scene leaders and label owners including Beau Wanzer, Willie Burns, Silent Servant and Ron Morelli.

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VA – Waves Of The Future [MNQ100]

VA – Snow Robots Volume 4 [SUNCTION043]

Formed in 1997, and inaugurated that year with a split 12” from new­comers and label founders, Solvent and Lowfish, this year Suction Records celebrates it’s 20th anniversary with the re­introduction of their famed Snow Robots series of compilations. While originally started as a North American answer to UK electronix labels like Rephlex, Skam and Warp Records, a sound that is still a staple of the current Suction Records catalog, Suction’s sound has also swerved into new territories, reflecting our love of dark ‘80s electronic music ­ synthpop, EBM, and beyond…. Snow Robots Volume 4 features an international array of artists, from Suction Records mainstays like Digital Poodle, June, Celldöd, and Ceramic Hello (with their much sought ­after 1982 vocoder anthem), to label­ favourites appearing on Suction Records for the first time: Beau Wanzer, Morah, and one of Skanfrom/Sleeparchive’s lesser known aliases, Civil Defence Programme.

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VA – Snow Robots Volume 4 [SUNCTION043]