Amazing release by Polar Inertia, who already gave a glimpse of their techno brilliance on Dement3d 002, but with ‘The Last Vehicle’ it seems their craftmanship has come to full growth. This third release on Dement3d is once again formed of three different tracks, high in contrasts and emotions. Industrial but groovy, raw yet hypnotising deep techno that will create a stir in basements and warehouses worldwide.
James Ruskin and Mark Broom return to Blueprint Records as The Fear Ratio with ‘Skana EP’. The EP delivers four new beautifully crafted cuts, while still lending themselves to the dancefloor. With their tough, heavy basslines, overlaid with syncopated beats, clipped tones and synth led melodies, ‘Skana EP’ continues where ‘Light Box’ left off and shows once again why these two talented UK producers are still at the very top of their game.
“Metasplice is a twisted debussy-esque of primal drums+chords over top of the chaos.
the sound of an atom splitting.
the sound of a nuclear explosion; the sound of the end of the world…
dialogue between an electronic experiment in nature and a synthesizer.”
Traxx (Nation, Chicago)
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.
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.
Debut album for BlakAndrew, released on his out bandcamp page. Awakening seems to trudge through an epic tale about good and evil – the inner struggles of light and darkness and how each power tries to defeat the other yet exists solely as a symbiotic balance. The album’s genres can be tough to pinpoint but “Awakening” definitely has a dark, electro-techno-industrial sound. The tracks wouldn’t be considered ‘dance floor anthems’ by any means, though most of the tracks have deep, pounding beats with undeniable techno roots. “Awakening” also pans into stretches of ambient, hip hop and electronica.
It all started in the industrial North Western part of Copenhagen in a small apartment. Nikolaj Birgens and Esben Kolster, inspired by the eighties cold wave, started creating music together using synthesizers, drum-machines, amplifiers, sequencers, guitars and stompboxes. Surrounded by factories and human dirt, dark songs are born…
New release from Romanian band Tanz Ohne Musik on their bandcamp page, including eight tracks with lush synths and haunting vocals.
Dominick Fernow might be best known for his industrial incantations under the Prurient moniker, but in recent months his attention has shifted towards a different outlet. Fernow’s interest in electronic music (from the clamorous grind of Muslimgauze to the recently defunct Sandwell District imprint) has been well documented, and it comes to a frothy head with his Vatican Shadow project. Revolving around themes gleaned from Iraq war propaganda and yellowing stacks of newspaper clippings, the tracks on ‘Kneel Before Religious Icons’ are a perfect representation of Fernow’s modus operandi. Behind a wall of tape hiss, drum machine rhythms beat out memories of early Ministry and AFX while sickly FM synthesizer pads crawl and heave into the abyss. Like much of Fernow’s output prior to this, the emphasis is on society’s darker crevices, but Vatican Shadow is steeped in an alarming mystery and sulfuric smoke that is sure to surprise recent converts.
Blackest Ever Black presents a much needed vinyl pressing of two tracks from Vatican Shadow’s debut cassette release, backed with Regis remix. For anyone familiar with the original 2010 tape or mp3 release, we should say this record sounds radically different, thanks in no small part to a pedigree mastering to vinyl by Matt Colton at London’s Air facilities. The haunting synth washes, grinding bass distortion and chopper blades of ‘Cairo Sword Unsheathed’, and the subharmonic bass of ‘Gunmen With Silencer’ are illuminated with a cold hard light, while their physical shape feels viscerally intimated. Regis transforms ‘Church Of All Images’ from Vatican Shadow’s ‘Kneel Before Religious Icons’ LP, adding another vividly compelling episode to his important cache.
Three tracks of paranoid Industrial techno coming straight from the guts of New York City! All songs therein have been recorded live in one take, with no editing. Here is urgent and immediate music which claws at the eyes of society and reflects the fucked up world we live ineveryday.
Henning Baer makes his debut on Sonic Groove imprint with an EP that sees abrasive industrial tones rub up menacingly against solid funk in a curious matching of audio devices. “Folsom” celebrates its graininess, but the beat remains an addictive and accessible one in the vein of the Live Jam collective. “The Spies” is more dangerous in its demeanour, as the stop-start groove does battle with decaying bleeps and kettle drum bass hits. “You Rhyth Me” on the flip ups the ante even more with a positively gruesome slow techno throwdown designed purely to terrify.
Ugandan Methods = Ugandan Speed Trials (Regis) + Ancient Methods. ‘Sixth Method’ is their second collusion of Industrial Techno mechanics, following a razing session on Downwards’ DN label in 2009. A-side is the droning, ‘floor ploughing behemoth ‘Beneath The Black Arch’, spiking AM’s war funk rhythms with a seething tribalist madness to deadly impact. Flipside ‘Between A Sleep And A Sleep’ relies on a more subtle sense of swing and hypnotic layering to deliver the desired effect, before they gorge on bludgeoning kicks and skin-flailing noise with remorseless brutality on ‘She Belongs To An Eternity’.
BlakeAndrew presents The Darkness Speaks Softly EP a 3 industrial tracks EP, free for download.
Free download on soundcloud.
Karl O’Connor digs into his sizeable archives for White Savage Dance, collating several key moments of his early experiments with industrially charged post-punk which surfaced during the early years of Downwards existence but were actually recorded long before. Sandwell District fans will find much to appreciate in the corrosive, metallic sounds that permeate throughout, not least the Anglo- Germanic versions of “Here & Now” that open and close the A Side. The jerking, spasmodic cold wave nature of the latter is a personal favourite here at Juno HQ. The B Side provides further intrigue as both tracks here see O’Connor step behind the mic, delivering some Robert Smith style vocals in his typical Brummie brogue atop sinewy guitars and drums that sound as if they’ve been carved from the hollow battering of caustic tin pans.
Part 2 of the black box… containing mental afro-american post-apocalyptic industrial tribal techno for your average sunday afternoon.
EST. 83′ present their first release, a 7” with 2 tracks from Especially Good, a new amazing band from Detroit.
The debut album from Tanz Ohne Musik, a project by Dan Serbanescu (The Pixels, Divine Muzak).
Milton Bradley recently released a new EP with Grounded Theory’s Henning Baer as K209. Some harder stomping noisy techno cuts.
The Hipodrome Of Music 