minimal synth
All posts tagged minimal synth
Mannequin Records and Platform 23 come together to start a series of stand-alone reissues of the music of post-punk / industrialists Bourbonese Qualk, starting with their 1983 album Laughing Afternoon. Formed in Southport during the late-70s, the band came to prominence out of South London’s squat scene via their own Recloose Organisation. Early releases including the band’s first experiments put to tape and the now highly sought after Sudden Departure compilation featuring luminaries Colin Potter, Eg Oblique Graph (Bryan Jones) and Lol Coxhill, laid the foundations of their burgeoning sound. Recorded and produced at the Recloose Studios in Camberwell in 1983, Simon Crab, Julian Gilbert and Steven Tanza infused their music with politically charged atmospherics, instrumental exploration, heavily laden reverb and dub, all projected by drum machine rhythms to assemble a musical collage which encapsulated strands beyond contemporary music. Track titles decipher little, as with the music, a discourse not belonging to a set style or movement, but crossing boundaries of supposition, pushing distortion and outernational leanings towards something else, a primordial discant. While tape loops warp the ears and spoken vocals propel songs like Blood Orange Bargain Day and To Hell With The Consequences and contrasting guitar acoustics pierce the mood on Qualk Street and Spanner In The Works, the overall embrace is claustrophobic, embedding a foreboding for the times. This unique, indulgent, cross genre melting pot where pounding rhythms, wailing trumpets, mournful melodica and electronic pulses all spiral in a contagious dissonance that heralded Bourbonese Qualk to the wider world.
Die Form is a French post-industrial and electronic band formed in 1977 as 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. With ‘Some Experiences with Shock’, originally issued in 1984, Die Form return to sadistic pleasures. The album is a rare example of medical music, horribly sordid moreover, adding a more extreme dimension to their work. The first side, “Survival & Determination”, contains 7 tracks recorded in studio with analog equipment are the direct realization of previous works. In contrast the second side, “Lacerations & Immolation”, contains 5 songs improvised in the fever of paramedical oppression, with aggressive sonorities from new digital synthesizers. Devoted to the madness (the phantom of Antonin Artaud is not far) and handling the machines with instinct, Die Form advance on the way of industrial electronic creation, without concession.
Lunatic is back, after an almost three year hiatus, they arise and bring ua the five track debut EP of En Direct. A true beacon for those who know and care. Five tracks of inbetween stuff: dark, bright and sincere.
“This Modern Day” is a dry, somber, hopeless statement. Kinder aus Asbest releases is first EP on Lux Rec and delivers five ghostly tracks, the perfect description of his world. The title track is a revised version of old material, the remaining four are made specifically for this EP.
Mothball Record presents a lost album from legendary Italian wave band: Ruins. Hailing from Venice, Ruins are one of the pioneering artists of the Italian new wave scene beginning in the late seventies: an explosion of new and exciting art, music and film. The tracks on ‘New Record’ were taken from the self-distributed, tape only release from 1983 ‘Side Roads’. This album was timed directly before their most well-known releases in contemporary times, the ‘Fire / Crime’ 12′ and the eponymous 4 track EP on Black Square. Taken from the original master tapes and selected by Ruins themselves, the album should be listened as a whole to gain the full experience, but immediate ‘must-hear’ tracks are ‘I Don’t Know’, ‘I Love You’ and ‘Last Night DJ Killed My Wife’ featuring early use of Roland TB303. At times unsettling, beautiful, violent, harmonious, these songs will finally get the audience and exposure they deserve 35 years later.
TWINS (That Which Is Not Said) returns to Enfant Terrible. On the A-side you will find a synthpop / minimal elektro / cold wave tune with a metal beat reminiscent of John Foxx. The B-side features a harsh elektro piece. It is tense and uptight, could also have been fitting for a Gooiland Elektro release and should be a future dj favorite for sure.
