Highly effective, banging 1990s EBM / Proto-Trance / Techno hybrids.
cold wave
VA – Dutch Wave: A History Of Minimal Synth & Cold Wave In The Netherlands [OS036]
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 – Nocturnal Emissions [MNQ102]
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.
O Yuki Conjugate – Scene In Mirage [ERC053]
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.
Police des moeurs- Dédales LP [MNQ110]
Police des moeurs is a synth pop band formed in Montreal in 2010. Their debut full-length, after some quicky old out singles, is permeated by a cold, melodic and nostalgic music for broken hearts and dark minds. Police des moeurs is the soundtrack for the nuclear night, a transition moment between the end of utopia and the final ecological disaster. The world after the future. Police des moeurs main influences and interests are underground aestheticisms (1979-1981), industrial transformations and the process of electrification, norms and deviance, nuclear and environmental anxiety as well as paranoia, secret agents, spies and political extremists.
Nacht’Raum / Band Berne Crematoire – Expanded 1982-1984 LP [MNQ096]
Mannequin Records to presents a LP compilation of Michael Antener (Swamp Terrorist) early 80’s minimal synth/industrial projects Nacht’raum (with Michael Stämpfli) and, as solo, Bande Berne Crematoire. Michael Antener made his first recordings in the basement of his parents house in a small village nearby Bern, Utzensdorf. He started BBC in 1980, a hybrid of Neue Deutsch Welle and noise/experimental, making a household name in the international home recording scene of the time and participating to many tape compilations. Teaming up with Michael Stämpfli as Nacht’raum, he self-released the untitled mini-lp in 1983. Coming out from the same town of Grauzone, the duo moved into the darkest minimal electronic sounds, choosing German as main language for the lyrics and a Roland Tr-808 as main drum machine, bringing the sound to a proto-electro dimension. Nacth’raum will be historically a real gem in the 80’s Swiss underground electronic music, together with Mittageisen, Grauzone, Liliput, The Vyllies. Michael, by the way, later teamed up with Ane Hebeisen and they went by the name of Swamp Terrorists, releasing seven albums and touring throughout the world until the end of the nineties. At the end of the nineties he sold all his instruments and became independent as a graphic artist.
L’Avenir – Soir [CBR012]
L’Avenir is the cold synth side project of veteran electronic musician and sound artist Jason Sloan. Known throughout the space and ambient music scenes for his contemplative electronic soundscape work for over a decade; Sloan founded L’Avenir as a side project in 2012 to explore his long time love of synthpop and minimal wave music created purely from analog and vintage equipment.
Negative Response – Oblique Angles [MR073]
Hand-picked selection of tracks by UK’s Negative Response in this initial limited run of 300 discs. Negative Response is a DIY minimal synth project that formed in 1980. They self-released 3 cassettes from 1981-1983 as well as playing a number of gigs from 82-85. The tracks embody a very melancholy atmosphere reinforced by their arsenal of early electronic analogue equipment. This collection will certainly appeal to fans of early bedroom synth artists such as John Bender and other DIY home recording moguls of the era.
Circa Tapes – Love & Venom [MR069]
Third full length album by Circa Tapes (solo project of Adam Killing of Kill Memory Crash). Following excellent previous releases on Romance Moderne and DKA, this third album displays the evolution of Killing’s spot on ability to masterfully blend dark early 80s synth, industrial and cold wave into a completely new entity. Much heavier and wonderfully darker, this LP will appeal to fans of classics like Skinny Puppy, as well as cutting edge EBM contemporaries such as Broken English Club, Boy Harsher and other cold wave / industrial hybrids.
VA – Selectors 003 [DKMNTLSLCTRS003]
Dekmantel’s Selectors series now continues with an edition curated by Marcel Dettmann. Although he’s now known as one of the world’s most celebrated techno artists, even Marcel Dettmann had to start somewhere. Long before he ever held court at Berghain (or its predecessor, Ostgut), he was just another young boy in Eastern Germany, one whose earliest encounters with capitalism involved spending every penny he could scrape together down at the local record shop. In those days, it wasn’t techno that got him excited, but new wave, post-punk, industrial and EBM acts like Front 242 and Depeche Mode. Get back to his roots right here.
Máma Bubo – Planeta Haj [JUP002]
Czechoslovakian band Máma Bubo was founded by Karel Babuljak in 1982; he put together five friends that he trusted. Having been more or less groping in the dark of music until then, Babuljak suddenly expressed a clear musical and human opinion to which the other members of Máma Bubo added theirs. A new band was born and although it had a clear face, it did not fit in anywhere, was hard to be connected with anything, and was isolated despite its openness. Máma Bubo always guaranteed an extraordinary and shocking experience which surpassed the level of entertainment. 1985: Babuljak’s disenchantment with the social situation as well as with artistic futility compelled him to a more profound attitude which resulted in a totally different concept, Planeta Haj, for Máma Bubo; yet, the concept was short-lived as if having been born in a place it did not fit in. In 2017, 2 LP of Planeta Haj, a record from 1985, was released on vinyl for the first time.
Qual – Cupio Dissolvi [AV!046]
Lebanon Hanover’s bassist William Maybelline is back with his solo project. Qual strikes back with a three-track 12′ maxi-single. Each one of these new songs explore a different dimension of Maybelline’s approach to Body/Wave electronics. The title-track Cupio Dissolvi is what we may already call classic Qual: gloomy and throbbing, synth-driven and labyrinthine. A Bloody Blob explores new martial slants, with war-like timpani and a marching robot gait. Rape Me in the Parthenon is a 8 minute long dancefloor mayhem anthem scanned by some pounding techno drumbeat and EBM snare and pads.
Detobeat – Cliffs EP [LURID006]
The name DETOBEAT. derives from the home cities of all parties involved in this project: DE/nver (Todd Nickolas), TO/ronto (Linus Booth and Chris Macintyre), BE/rlin (Gene Kouzouka) and AT/hens (Lurid Music). Their debut release features a reworked female vocal version of Ciffs by Marie Davidson, an assaulting techno rework from her Essaie Pas partner Pierre Guerineau, a psychedelic guitar excursion from Khidja, as well as the first ever remix commissioned from legendary greek electronic composer Lena Platonos.
Le Cliché – Consumer Manoeuvres LP [CBR011]
“Consumer Manoeuvres” by Le Cliché is the latest release on Cold Beats Records. Le Cliché is the electronic music project of Gerard Ryan, professor of marketing at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. The music takes a critical view of the malaise of marketing and its effect on our postmodern consumer society. It deals with serious issues as diverse as consumer privacy, identity, fad diets, fast fashion and the hyper-reality of contemporary advertising. Yet it does so always with an optimistic sarcasm and playfulness. This new collection of songs on Cold Beats Records, entitled Consumer Manoeuvres, started out as a remix project but very quickly turned into an all-together different record, a series of collaboration, covers and reimagining’s of the original music. Cold Beats Records presents some of the most influential electronic artists from the underground, minimal synth and coldwave scene from the last 35 years in an all-together darker record Le Cliché’s other records. Collaborators include Mark Lane, Mick Milk, Kline Coma Xero and Spatial Relation (USA), ADN’ Ckrystall (France), Red Fetish, John Costello, This is the Bridge and Jonteknik (UK), KuBO (Ireland) Moss Garten (Sweden) JJ Ibañex of Kremlyn, and Wladyslaw Triejo (Spain) Delayscape (Denmark), Gay Cat Park and Effetto Joule (Italy).These artists have appeared on many of the most influential darkwave, coldwave, italo and minimal synth music on a host of leading labels including Minimal Wave, Mannequin, Medical Records, Peripheral Minimal, Anna Logue, Domestica, Obscure Identities 1980, Vinyl on Demand, La Forme Lente and Kernkrach.
VA – 3375.1969 [FLEXI019]
FlexiWave returns with the follow up to the acclaimed 2012 cassette 290.625”. This new 60C cassette boasts 14 freshly vetted tracks of finest obscure electronica. From the shimmering, pearlesque sounds of Lisa & Kroffes’ “Rönnbär” to the dark and pensive Colouroids banger “Shove” and a new moniker from Silent Em & Portable Morla, Alta Dosis, 3375.1969” gathers a new clutch of artists set to earn FlexiWave another round of praise for their stellar compilations. Also on offer are Scottish/Icelandic duo Revigorators’ Joy Division-inspired Post-Punk/New-Wave excursion “Black Out City”, Black People’s one-of-a-kind textures and caterwauling rhythms on “White Man Is The Devil”, and nine other handpicked, finely crafted sonic gems.
Staccato Du Mal – El Mago En Ti [NOSTILEVO061]
Miami is a Geministic outpost of complimentary halves: subtropical rainforest and art deco cityscape; unmitigated wealth and staggering poverty; limitless sunshine and equally limitless thunderstorms. From this outpost, culturally and geographically isolated from a state teeming with hillbilly abjection, composer Ramiro Jean-Carlo entertains a unique decadence under the guise of Staccato Du Mal, a project perhaps something of an anomaly in Miami, but no less at home. At turns gauzy and drugged, energized and electric, SDM is analog electronics that would be best heard in a blacklit dance club or a mouldering mansion against the background of any given tropical depression. “El Mago en Ti” shows Jean-Carlo keeping things as sinister as ever, with classic SDM sawtooth baselines and rickety clattering rhythms (Spherical Aberration), “La Gran Evasion”), with the requisite amount of reverb (lots), but with a few surprises: opening track “Drowning Feathers” integrates Jean-Carlo’s affection for classical music into the project, with its complex and sullen chord structure reminiscent of a J.S. Bach organ piece, while the songs “El Mago en Ti” and “Fistful Questioning” showcase an industrial aggression unexplored in the context of SDM.
Synths Versus Me – 1987 [MEC024]
Synths Versus Me is a prolific duo formed by Vanessa Asbert and Nico Cabañas. This 12” EP includes two brand new tracks and two exclusive remixes. The original version of 1987” is an atomic bomb of pure vintage EBM in the vein of Signal Aout 42 and Front 242. The remix done by Dirk Da Davo from The Neon Judgement keeps the feeling of the track but adding some drums, guitar samplers and sequences trademarked by this Belgian legend. On the b-side there is the original mix of Aimless Device”, an electro-pop tune with catchy melodies, analogic bass lines and female voices. The remix prepared for this track by the new american sensation Boy Harsher is a surefire dancefloor full of hypnotic beats and dark atmospheres.
Die Form – Zoo LP [DE136]
Die Form is a French post-industrial and electronic band formed in 1977-1978. The name ‘Die Form’ means ‘(the) form/shape’ in German and is a play on the English homonym ‘deformed’ and on the French homonym ‘difforme’ (deformed). Die Form is the primary project of electronic musician and multimedia artist Philippe Fichot. He began by recording a number of experimental cassette releases in the late 1970s and formed the Bain Total label to release these early cassettes, as well as various side projects such as Krylon Hertz, Camera Obscura, Eva-Johanna Reichstag, Hurt and Fine Automatic. In 1982 Die Form released their debut vinyl album, “Die Puppe” in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. “Zoo” is a compilation of 10 tracks recorded during the “Die Puppe” sessions from 1980-82. These were the first esoteric electronic experiments, often improvised. Underlying themes of eroticism, death, and other ‘taboo’ subjects become apparent in both the music and the album artwork, which Philippe also produced. The album was recorded with entirely analog equipment, including a Roland MC4 Micro-Composer, TR-808 Rhythm Composer, ARP 2600, and Kawai 60F recorded to a Revox B77 reel to reel tape machine. Songs range from hypnotic, minimalistic proto-IDM to daring experimental sound manipulation. 4 of these songs were featured as a bonus 7” to accompany the 1989 vinyl reissue of “Die Puppe” but remixed for the project. The remaining 6 songs were also remixed and released on CD in 2001.
VA – Wosto / Kilian Krings Edits [SBZ002]
Sign Bit Zero strides onwards with a set of punishing dancefloor interpretations of forgotten industrial gems handpicked by Hamburg’s Wosto and label head honcho, Kilian Krings. While Wosto’s previous output as half of Fallbeil is as much informed by Chicago house as EBM, his contributions to SBZ002 focus on the C90 experimentation which roughens the edges of the duo’s past efforts for Contort Yourself and New York Haunted. Kilian Krings explores his passion for Neue Deutsche Welle and its various offshoots in his edits here, setting a bold statement for the future of both his own and Sign Bit Zero’s no-compromise approach. SBZ002 sheds light on crucial yet often overlooked aspects of 1980s industrial experimentation. Wosto and Kilian Krings morph their discoveries into club-ready headspinners, assured to prove a highlight of any adventurous DJ set.
Ian Hicks – VIY [CDRTP036]
After crafting the deconstructed synth-pop of Soft Metals for the past 6 years, Portland OR – based synth artist Ian Hicks has resumed his solo output and has delved deeper into exploring the darker, weirder, more mutant alleys of his mind and studio. Inspired by the capricious winter of the Pacific Northwest, early industrial gear experiments, science fiction, horror and the explosion of the modular synthesizer scene in Portland, Ian presents VIY as his initial post-Soft Metals work. VIY is a snap shot of an ever-changing configuration of equipment, textures and moods captured with minimal processing and editing to preserve the original idea in the purest form.
