Aleksa Alaska – AUFSCHNITT #19
minimal synth
Daniele Cosmo – In Disarray 047
Bourbonese Qualk – Laughing Afternoon [PLA030/MNQ111]
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 – Some Experiences With Shock [DE232]
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.
En Direct – En Direct EP [LUN06]
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.
Kinder aus Asbest – This Modern Day [LXRC36]
“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.
Ruins – New Record LP [RUINS001]
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 – Make Life Before You [PETITENFANT017]
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.
Life In Sodom – The Stains [MNQ098]
Conceived by vocalist Gerrie Brand, the band Life In Sodom was starting out as performance art, and quickly became more as Gerrie surrounded himself with some of the best musicians from the club and art scene in South Florida, including Mystic Bill, who was playing the guitar with the band in the early stages. Originally self-released in 1991, the single ”The Stains” became an underground club hit and charted on many college radio stations, in both the extended and the original version. The single was distributed as a hard to get promo only release. The repress contains also the title-track of the single “Phantasmagoria” – another cult tune for early 90’s goth djs – originally released in 1992 and a friendly dancefloor cut of the title-track by Alessandro Adriani.
Sympathy Nervous – Sympathy Nervous [MW067]
Minimal Wave presents a reissue of Sympathy Nervous’ pioneering debut album originally released in 1980 on Vanity Records out of Japan. Sympathy Nervous was Yosihumi Niinuma’s lifelong project which he started in his Tokyo living room in 1979. Through Sympathy Nervous, Niinuma was able to channel his energy into what he loved – building his own synthesizers and speakers from scratch. Niinuma was inspired by German Krautrock and through his music created intense proto-techno soundscapes. Now finally available for the first time ever, remastered from the original tapes used for the 1980 release, is the timeless masterpiece in its entirety.
Veronica Vasicka – In Silhouette [LIN080]
Pivotal, peerless DJ/selector and Minimal Wave overse’er Veronica Vasicka serves her solo debut on Downwards. ‘From Here’, a dank industrial-pop workout recorded in 2004 and now issued for the first time, backed with sick remixes by Regis, Paul Kendall (Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb) and Robert Hampson (Loop, Main) in his lesser-spotted Chasm alias.
Curses – Romantic Fiction [DA007LP]
“Romantic Fiction” the debut LP from Curses is an honest musical expression drawing influences from his youth growing up in NYC in the 80s. References to new wave, post-punk, synth music and early EBM are skillfully merged with the DIY approach of punk and rock n roll angst. Brandishing an immersive sonic palette, all instruments throughout the album were played and recorded by the artist.
Boris Barksdale – Tephra Ensemble [VV009]
Le Syndicat Electronique – Le Syndicat Electronique [MNQ125]
Mannequin Records presents a 2xLP retrospective compilation of the french electro/wave pioneer Le Syndicat Électronique, the historical electro/wave project by Alaxis Andreas G., founder of the seminal Invasion Planète Recordings – the first French minimal electro/wave/experimental label founded in late 1998 by the insurance proceeds of a car crash. Heavily influenced by the work of masters like Kraftwerk/John Carpenter/Front 242, Alaxis Andreas G. is responsible for many others dark electronic / industrial / neofolk projects – to name a few: A//, Bruta Non Calculant, Swesor Brother, La Séduction Des Innocents, It & My Computer, Eva VIII.
Kris Baha – BIS Radio Show #959
VA – Danzas Electricas Vol. II [MMLP2002]
The ‘metallic’ compilation Danzas Electricas is back for a second volume. Curated by Sacha Mambo, it presents only artists from nowadays and takes distance from the edits to push original and weird electronic music of close artists friends from Dresden, Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague, Lyon and Hamburg. Some of them are already relatives of Macadam Mambo : Konsistent, Wosto, Heninspace, Eva Geist or Sacha himself and it introduces new acts : Ekstern (Nixxon & Spacelex), Service, Houschyard or Sauerstofff to present a good mixture of Kraut, Punk, Industrial tracks, which never fall into dark.
Raw – Fragments EP [DE-221]
Raw formed during the summer of 1990 in Athens, Greece when keyboardist Giannis Papaioannou and percussionist Makis Faros started composing music for imaginary waiting rooms. They combined the traditional cut-up technique of tape-loops, the industrial timbres of musique concrète with the harmonics of world music, all filtered through digital sampling and computer programming. Their first recordings generated an 8 track demo, which was freely distributed among friends and the local underground press. After 6 months of work and several sessions with guest musicians on acoustic and electric instruments, Raw self-released their first album ‘Land’ in December 1991 on Elfish Records. In 1992 they recruited the band’s sound engineer, Coti K., as a third member, both on stage and studio sessions. ‘City’ was their second album fully inspired by the mechanisms of their home town. Presenting a different electronic face of Raw, manipulating rhythms with analogue synthesizers and harsh sampling to evoke the atmosphere of Athens. ‘City’ was released on CD only by Elfish Records in 1994. ‘Fragments’ is a collection of 4 songs from ‘City’ presented on vinyl for the first time plus bonus track recorded during the “City’ sessions previously released on a compilation in 1992.
BLΔCKMOON77 – Radio Rituel 07
VA – Alternative Funk: Volume 1 [PLA023]
Platform 23 launches with the reissue of the seminal Alternative Funk compilation series, presenting a selection of music across 2 volumes. Known for the highly heralded “Folie Distinguee” album in 1985, what is often over looked is the fact there accompanied 2 further “Alternative Funk” cassette compilations that same year. Coming within the Audiologie series on Vox Man Records, these “Various Artist” selections were indicative of labels that sprung up in the early 80s around the DIY post-punk scene. As founders of Vox Populi!, Axel Kyrou and Francis Man, working with close associate Pierre Jolivet’s (aka Pacific 231) VP 231 label, released a number of cassettes, 7″ and LPs between 1982 and 1988, as much to self-release their own music as to push new or contemporary artists. Here then is a snapshot of the Alt Funk albums, selecting songs that avoid recent or upcoming reissues, to dive deep in the series from industrial to cold wave, proto-dub percussion to avant spoken word pieces. Featuring the likes of Son Of Sam, Philippe Laurent, Fist Of Facts – with a long lost first ever recording – and Human Backs, stepping out from semi-cult name dropping to sit alongside unknowns and never heard from again in Scoop!, Kosa, Zoohtee and the wonderful Randall Kennedy. What is apparent is an idiosyncratic nature to the selections. In the same way many independent labels of the time – such as Auxilio De Cientos’ Terra Incognita volumes or Final Image’s Nightlands – created a label snapshot by pulling together far and wide contributions but retaining an overall ‘sound’. The Volume 1 and 2 reissue achieve that, mixing experimental with electro, post punk with noise, to offer more than the sum of their parts – an Alternative Funk.
Alessandro Adriani – Mugako Podcast 017
The Hipodrome Of Music 