Quattrovalvole is the project of Joone & Miss Zagato. Taking inspiration from Ferrari’s Vetroresina 308, sunset driving on a dark mission, the listener becomes an accomplice, so beware. You may be charged. Curb crawling, speeding, reaching for something that drives you wild and swerve off the road. The windscreen shatters, and your fingerprints are everywhere. Run. Four on the floor Italo-disco, glossy 80s new wave, Quattrovalvole is an afterdark lifestyle. Released by Oráculo Records.
After the repress of their single “Eyes / Morning Rain”, Camisole Records announces the reissue of Coldreams tape “Crazy Night”. Recorded in 1984-1985 by a gang of young students passionate about Post-Punk this record represents the culmination of the band first period. Haunted lyrics and melancholia were already the basics of their sound and from “Don’t Cry” to “Crazy Night / Burning Passion” it’s difficult to imagine that they were only 18 to 19 years old at that time. “Bulbs and Bubbles” and “Turn the Button” show their pop appeal which definitely takes them apart from their contemporaries and all-around gloomy feelings infuse these six tracks which unveils another part of Coldreams history.
Cold Beats Records announces the launch of series Another Cold World. This time with a 12″ EP the composed with 4 tracks including DILK, WLDV, Dernier Sex and Hanging Gardens, keeping the label’s philosophy, we have once again united groups and artists that stand out within the minimal/synth/coldwave scene.
The first Lux Rec release after summer is a split EP that puts together two musicians from different regions, different backgrounds. On the A-side there’s an old acquaintance of the label, Kinder aus Asbest, with Life after Death and Washed Away. As hopeless as it gets. On the B-side there’s Rosa Nebel, and upcoming artist from Austria that matches perfectly, with his dystopian views on society, the core dissatisfaction for humankind that Lux Rec has.
Popnihil returns with an album of intricate postpunk from Daniel Holt’s new project Human Figures. Besides running Ardetha Records, Holt has impressed with dungeon synth and ambient projects, his dark synth duo Vault, and a mind-melting techno 12″ for L.I.E.S. Records. But Human Figures is a completely new and personal avenue of expression. “Footsteps” features hymnal, meditative post-punk from musical polymath Daniel Holt.
Polytechnic Youth return with the whacked out synth-punk mini LP “Es Una Bestia” by Wladyslaw Trejo. Trejo is a Spanish musician, and a key figure in the European underground electronic scene; and despite this being his first solo album since 2015’s self titled debut, he is eternally busy, especially as part of ‘avant-wave’ dueo Slovenska Televiza. Trejo says of the record: “Es Una Bestia is a settling of personal accounts with the ghosts and fears of youth. Digging through the wounds, exploring the cursed soul, inviting his monsters to come to the surface and they do so in the form of vitriolic and hallucinated synth-punk. For this bloody task he has aquired the best possible help, the complicity of the prestigious (and Nick Cave favourite) Polish painter Aleksandra Waliszewska, who provides vocals, as well as the director and musician Wiktor Stribog, the brain behind the ‘Kraina Grzybów’ phenomenon, who collaborates on the lyrics. In his solo project Wladyslaw reveals himself as a crooked line, a faustic anomaly that invites to a dark and psychotropic journey in the form of feverish electronics, industrial rhythms, and almost paranoid sound walls through certain life risks”.
Dark Entries Records presents ‘Fortunate Isolation’ the sophomore album from Borusiade. Born and raised in Bucharest, Romania, Borusiade aka Miruna Boruzescu started dj-ing in 2002 as one of the very few female DJs in the city’s emerging alternative clubbing scene. Influenced by a classical musical education, a bachelor in film direction and fascinated by raw electronic sounds, Borusiade first combined these universes in the construction of her DJ sets and starting 2005 also in her music production. A sound of her own has slowly crystallized, often dark with poignant bass lines, obsessive themes and by all means melodic. ‘Fortunate Isolation’ is perhaps Borusiade’s most personal release to date. Eight songs that capture a bystander witnessing the world as it undergoes drastic changes. We have disconnected ourselves from ecology, humanity, preservation, care for what surrounds us, for what is still alive. Borusiade adds, “| know that this place, our home has went through so many other extinctions, but | believe things will find their own way on this planet only once we are gone. Entropy creates a time-line but also a transformation – a new beginning.” The album’s sound is gloomy and powerful mixing sonic film sequences, rhythmic excursions and soothing yet obsessive vocals that touch one’s deepest senses. Lyrically the songs tackle themes of forgotten memories, spirituality, mortality, and destruction.
The Spanish label Oraculo Records presents Aleatory Chaos Third Chapter, a various artist including four cord wave / synth pop tracks coming from Xymox, Vacant Stares, Oby Wolf and Abu Nein.
Luca Venezia, aka Curses, has with his Carcassonne-Mini LP, written and produced a cold wave dream filtered through how all the sci-fi movie soundtracks of the eighties should have sounded like; picture The Cure on a study visit in John Carpenters studio in 1983. This six-track Mini LP is his first release on Hoga Nord Rekords and features eighties influenced dark and expensive sounding electronic music. Luca Venezia also solves the task of putting vocal elements in the tracks with sharpness and precision; the heavy processed reverberating overdubs float in and out on a tastefully low level in the mix.
This long time sought after french post-punk/coldwave/melancholic pop 7″ finally gets an official reissue, by Camisole Records. Coldreams was a french female fronted post-punk band hailing from Clermont-Ferrand.
Alessandro Adriani has become a trusted source for all kinds of beyond-the-grave minimal synth, industrial and coldwave delights. Aside from his work in releasing forgotten gems and up to the minute synth incantations, Adriani has also been quietly issuing out his own music as well. Originally released in 2016, ‘Montagne Trasparenti’ is now repressed on Mannequin Records with a full new graphic design.
Stratis is an electronic duo from Cologne, Germany, formed by Antonios Stratis and Albert Klein in 1981. They took inspiration from the progressive electronic synthscapes of Tangerine Dream & Vangelis and the proto-techno of Chris & Cosey and Yello, as well as jazz and funk. The duo recorded 5 cassette-only albums between 1982 and 1986 – Exotic, New Face, Musica da Ballo, Film Musik, and Raging Beauty – which were released on their own label Creative Tapes (later called Temporary Music), and which were also licensed to Colin Potter’s Integrated Circuit Records (ICR) label. We are pleased to announce the first ever standalone vinyl reissue of their sophomore album “New Face’, which was recorded and released in 1983. It consists of eight future-fixated tracks that could have been composed for movies like Blade Runner or Tron. A wide range of minimal electronics are presented, from robotic synth pop to melancholic cold wave to Neue Deutsche Welle electro.
No stranger to the darkness, Kris Baha takes us by the heart this time for the 8th She Lost Lontrol’s release. The sound of this 12 extended EP is sad as it is romantic filling the void of most things that are present in our lives albeit momentarily. ‘In Your Arms’ is not the defeat but the endless struggle, the serendipitous celebration of loss. Within the lyrical confines as dark as the period that brought them to light, he screams about fighting and resisting in a cruel present through a selfless in-look for a outsiders perspective into what it means to him and us to have lost to love , lost to lust and lost to death. Every end has a beginning.
It’s been almost six years since the release of the band’s critically-acclaimed debut album “The World Is Getting Colder”. Since then the half Brit-half German duo have established themselves as one of the most powerful and successful genre-defining acts throughout Europe, scoring 5 heart-throbbing albums and numerous performances all around the world, making them one of the most successful bands of the cold wave / minimal wave scene. Lebanon Hanover’s the 5th album “Let Them Be Alien” is available via Fabrika Records. Exploring the sonic and emotional range that the audience have learned to expect from Lebanon Hanover, “Let Them Be Alien” is built up in emotional vocals, liquid chords, dramatic keys, and distorted digital waves where the duo recalls the eerie clouds of industrial and goth 1980’s. The album depicts the dark honesty and profound feelings of two alienated personas with true romantic hearts yet feeling socially unrest. In each track, William and Larissa tell a different story which will sweep the audience through a deep, conscious, continual and wistful trip, and ultimately keep them anchored in feelings.
First chapter on Onderstroom digging into the history of Dutch minimal synth & wave. Comes in a gatefold sleeve with metallic finishing and pressed on 180gr. vinyl. Who needs a big, expensive recording studio with all those fancy high-tech machines that only make your weary head spin when you can do it all by yourself at home in your (teenage) bedroom? Way back in the early eighties all you really needed was an idea, quite a bit of guts and some rudimentary equipment. You could basically do whatever you wanted. The means were limited, yet the sky was unbounded. It was the time of the cold war nuclear threat, social unrest and mass unemployment but at the same time it was an era of infinite possibilities. The future was just around the corner. A lot of music that was being produced sounded just like that: a brave new world of sound and rhythm. Music was simply put on cheap cassettes, easily duplicated and swiftly distributed in limited quantities into the big world outside.
Nocturnal Emissions has been one of the best kept secrets of the industrial genre since the 1970s. Led by Nigel Ayers, the band was one of the first to use tape cutting, avant-garde art, and underground video works to create a stage experience that was being cultivated by like-mindedartists like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. The band moved on to using samplers and electronic noise in their early 80’s work, creating a twisted funk sound that would go on to influence everyone from Foetus to Negativland. They still utilized their former tricks, upping the ante with extremist performance art and more professional video displays. The group avoided signing to a major label, instead focusing on releasing their own music more effectively. They followed this path into the 90’s when they started http://www.earthlydelights.co.uk, an incredibly detailed website that promotes their various ideologies (they are strongly against the British monarchy and believe that citizens should have unlimited access to space travel) and constant release schedule. The band has released countless tapes and CDs of their material, and continues to unleash their noise through their website.
Emotional Rescue returns to the music of “dark ambient” pioneers O Yuki Conjugate (OYC) with the reissue of their debut album, ‘Scene in Mirage’. Released in 1984, it’s post-industrial; cold wave overtures mixed with an ambient oeuvre created a compelling album that has gained cult status. Quickly selling out in its original pressing, inexplicably their record label decided not to re-press, so an expanded cassette version called ‘Scene In Mirage/Soundtracks’ was re-released on the band’s own Final Image label with an accompanying video. Here, Emotional Rescue’s re-issue combines the best of both versions in a lovingly recreated sleeve taken from the original design templates. Based around original members Roger Horberry and Andrew Hulme, OYC is now returning in its fourth incarnation with live shows and hopefully, new music to come. Watch the horizon.
