Blind Delon – La Métamorphose LP [VEYL038]

Veyl welcomes Blind Delon to the label with a new album, La Métamorphose. Founded in 2016 by Mathis Kolkoz, the band currently consists of Mathis Kolkoz (Vocals, Guitars), Coco Thiburs (Bass) and Thom Mayor (Synths, Guitars). Fueled by cold bass lines and synthesizers of yesteryear, French post-punk and black romanticism, Blind Delon shatters genres and styles to create an evolved strain of synthpunk that wears its influences proudly while mutating into something totally new. La Métamorphose represents a fresh direction – a heavy, post-metal sound that’s full of emotion and raw intensity. ‘Le Crépuscule’ opens the album with a hard hitting piece that commences the experience perfectly. Next up, the group kicks things into high gear with the speedy, heavy-synth play of ‘La Violence’ featuring vocals by Fivequestionmarks, followed by ‘La Mort’, a blackened post-punk cut featuring Curses. Label head Maenad Veyl makes a guest appearance on the fourth track, ‘L’Homme’, which drifts into deep experimental melancholy with a cinematic feel. Keeping with this mood is the powerful ‘L’Affront’ featuring The KVB, which descends further into darkness before resurrecting with the immense feelings of ‘Le Sarcasme’. Track seven, ‘La Noyade’, drills into the skull with growling vocals and menacing synths which bleed nicely into ‘La Foule’, slowing things back down with a subtle yet lingering sense of dread. French project Poison Point arrive on ‘L’Envie’ which moves guitars back to the forefront for a raucous ballad that sets up the final piece and title track, ‘La Métamorphose’, the glorious grand finale of an album teeming with emotion and begging to be played again and again. 

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Blind Delon – La Métamorphose LP [VEYL038]

Schulverweis – Mehr b​/​w No Future [FLR03]

The third release on the Ferry Lane label comes from Schulverweis, the German duo formed by Levente Pavelka and Johannes Haas (L.F.T.), presenting a new record revisiting the idiosyncratic Neue Deutsche Welle sounds. On the A-side, Mehr merges electro with wave while on the flip we have the snazzy garage punk of No Future.

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Schulverweis – Mehr b​/​w No Future [FLR03]

Martin Dupont – Kintsugi LP [SEA013LP]

In collaboration with Meidosem and Infrastition, Minimal Wave presents Kintsugi, a new album by the highly lauded French group Martin Dupont. The album features lush re-works of their old songs, originally released on their highly sought-after 1980s albums. The French band is known for making beautiful, heady electronic, with striking, poetic vocals. A hard-to-classify group from Marseille with a cult following and some mainstream success, Martin Dupont has inspired some of the luminaries of the contemporary music scene crossing many genres from trip-hop to electro to techno. Kintsugi reassembles their old spirit that is colorful, enthusiastic, and delicate, yet also melancholy and mysterious. A mixture of hot and cold, light and dark. Martin Dupont’s music is considered electronic though they also incorporate guitars and clarinets. They are described by many as New Wave, though their music truly transcends genres.

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Martin Dupont – Kintsugi LP [SEA013LP]

Nam’s – Chaos [LXRC49]

Naamal M’bae aka Nam’s is next on Lux Rec, namely, number 49. The young musician is all dark and desperation, fast, angry and on point. Song titles are quite explicative of the mood one will swirl into. A 7” with an extremely fresh take on all the things we like. Bitter frustration. Spiralling down into chaos.

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Nam’s – Chaos [LXRC49]

Staatseinde – Fehlerlinie [MR-090]

Medical Records releases the first full LP by Dutch cosmic explorers Staatseinde. Formed in 2006, Staatseinde have released a multitude of cassettes, singles as well as a CDR album in 2012. ”Fehlerlinie” represents the culmination of a very productive couple of years including stellar performances at the streaming IFM Fest, the release of compelling collaboration tapes and other releases. Though impossible to confine to a single genre or style, their music can be described as a captivating fusion of electro-pop, electro-clash and robotic punk/wave. Each and every track carefully chosen for this LP is a dancefloor ripper.

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Staatseinde – Fehlerlinie [MR-090]

Schneebezen – Amnesia Lane [MEC076]

Schneebezen was formed in 1986/87 by Bart Plaskoff (vocals, lyrics, backing keyboard) and Glen Moller (keyboards, programming, backing vocals). They managed to build a small recording studio in West Los Angeles and started to compose their first songs. In 1989, with the assistance of producer Bryan Carlstrom (Billy Idol, PIL), they recorded the EP “Take Those Shades Off”. This release included two top-ten hits. “Magical Meeting Of The Minds” and “Can’t Remain A Friend” were beating out bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure on various dance charts thanks to heavy rotation on KROQ, LIVE-105 and other radio stations around the USA and abroad. In light of this success an EMI executive approached the band. Bart and Glen began doing some demos in 1990 but it was during this time they realized that from their perspective synth music was dead so creative differences began to occur. They knew they would go the way of most bands on the edge of getting a record deal with a major label. Schneebezen split. “Amnesia Lane” is a compendium of the short but fruitful career of Schneebezen including the complete “Take Those Shades Off” EP and lot of unreleased stuff with studio recordings, live outtakes and demos recorded between 1989 and 1990. Everything has been carefully restored and remastered from the original DAT and cassette tapes.

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Schneebezen – Amnesia Lane [MEC076]

Genetic Factor – In Deadly Wet Dreams [AD016]

Artificial Dance announces the full archival compilation of work by Richard Zeilstra A.K.A. Genetic Factor. Recorded in different parts of the world, at different times – we hope this will give the world a glimmer of the mind of Genetic Factor. A mind that has been behind a variety of very influential operations during the years; including a string of radio programmes (Radionome & Spleen a.o.), working at Boudisque and running Barcelona’s first compact disc store. The songs featured are not an attempt of making a coherent ‘album’ but much more trials of interpretation of his world into ‘music’. His strong believe in non-musicianship makes it more thrilling than conventional musics, yet these recordings are not result of amateurism – they form a consistent reality of what excites him. Take a dive in the realm of the Genetic Factor…

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Genetic Factor – In Deadly Wet Dreams [AD016]

R Gamble – The One With the Eyes [MRG013]

“The One With the Eyes” by R. Gamble is Marguerite Records’ 13th release. The tracks were all written between the summer and fall of 2020. The pandemic was in its bewildering initial phase when daily life had come apart from its familiar rhythms. The tracks describe this disruption and the return to a musical primordial state by limiting the field of vision to locate the essential. In fact, the artist limited himself with one synthesizer, one drum machine, and a sequencer and the instinct guided him shaping these little vignettes. Now nearly two years later they’re being released into a world that has in many ways resumed its regulated flow. We hope people can still catch a glimpse of that other world outside of time, the vague fear crystallized, the shadows made by afternoon sunbeams gliding like continents across the floor. Marguerite Records owners the duo Bianco Negativo were strongly impressed by the last album track ‘Precious Arc’ and decided to make a remix in a dark cinematic key.

R Gamble – The One With the Eyes [MRG013]

Curses – Incarnadine [DA021]

“The album is a dialogue between the inner self and outer, and romance of eternal and immortal existence. Hence the first single, ‘Miriam’ being a ballad to the Vampiress main character in The Hunger book and film from the 80s. How do we make an emotion timeless?“

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Curses – Incarnadine [DA021]

Yasuaki Shimizu – Kiren [PF011]

Acclaimed saxophonist, producer and composer Yasuaki Shimizu will release Kiren, his unreleased album from 1984, on the Palto Flats record label. Kiren is Yasuaki Shimizu’s work for experimental dance music. Employing cutting edge production to create lush new wave soundscapes, it bridges the gap between his early 80s recordings and his later work with the Saxophonettes, filling a key lost chapter in his discography. By the early 1980s Yasuaki Shimizu had established himself on the Japanese new wave scene, producing many important experimental pop records and releasing several albums as the bandleader of Mariah. Following the release of his widely regarded solo classic Kakashi, from 1982, and the otherworldly Utakata No Hibi, by Mariah in 1983, he went into the studio the following year with frequent collaborators, producer Aki Ikuta and Morio Watanabe (bassist of Mariah), to record a mystifying collection of experimental dance music. Utilizing cutting-edge technology and studio trickery, Kiren showcases Shimizu’s trademark playfulness, marrying richly layered production techniques to off-kilter, sometimes traditional sounding rhythms and melodies. Portending his work with the Saxophonettes as well as forecasting trends in techno, new wave, and futuristic rhythmic music, this formerly lost album represents an important period of Shimizu’s artistic expression, an artist at his peak, while successfully exploring the intersections of fusion, synthpop, new wave, and jazz.

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Yasuaki Shimizu – Kiren [PF011]

Human Figures – Tabula Rasa [DC012]

Tabula Rasa is a deep and often wistful journey into the world of Daniel Holt’s project Human Figures. Transitive and ethereal, these eight tracks effortlessly fuse elements of cold wave, post-punk, and minimal electronics culminating in a pensive opus awash in faded dreams. Another classic from the visionary artist at his finest.

Human Figures – Tabula Rasa [DC012]

Genetic Factor – Sampler 12″ [AD015]

GENETIC FACTOR - Sampler

Artificial Dance spent a wealth of time going through the archived recordings of Richard Zeilstra, AKA Genetic Factor. Richard was a pivotal figure in the Amsterdam new wave and avant-garde pop music circles. Besides hosting the ever-influential Spleen and Radionome radio shows on the VPRO he also found time to conduct his own audible experiments. As a firm believer of music by non-musicians Richard has made the effort throughout the last decades to keep on recording in a variety of different guises on different parts of the planet. In these different times and places, the genetic factor was always there. The sampler contains 2 songs from a forthcoming 2×12″ full-length archival compilation and 2 exclusives. The archival compilation will see the day of light in 2022. Fully endorsed and in collaboration with Richard, compiled by Olf van Elden & Robert Bergman.

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Genetic Factor – Sampler 12″ [AD015]

Claus Fovea – Open Eyes Shut [LXRC48]

FOVEA, Claus - Open Eyes Shut

In 2012 Claus Fovea self released a cassette containing 10 tracks, he was at his Swedish beginnings. 9 years later Lux Rec re-discovered his tape and it still sounded so true and relevant to them that they decided to release it on vinyl. Claus then reworked some tracks, scrap some, and made few new. Florin Buchel mixed them down and Andrea Merlini mastered them. The result is a picture frozen in time, in between now and then, the struggle, and sadness, that fragile construction of hope shattered as time goes by, like nothing ever change. It is indeed, as he sings, just the same song playing all the time. Over and over.

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Claus Fovea – Open Eyes Shut [LXRC48]

L.F.T. – Salz LP [MNQ149]

Mannequin Records introduce you a brand new album by Johannes Haas aka L.F.T. (Love, Fist, Tears) – one of the hottest electro/wave names around the globe. Pursuing a stubborn DIY aesthetic with an extensive use of lo-fi technology, over compressed drum machines and tapes, over the last two years L.F.T. has released several records on different labels like Helena Hauff’s Return To Disorder and Elena Colombi’s Osaré Editions. Endorsing a distinctive contemporary sound, ‘Salz’ is moving forward to an highly authentic mixture of electro and synthwave, with a lo-fi analog power blended all over his tracks, somewhere between Liaisons Dangereuses, I-F and Bakterielle Infektion, bringing us back – and fresh as never before – the amazing early days of CBS Radio – now Intergalactic Fm.

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L.F.T. – Salz LP [MNQ149]

Fontaine SMC – I Was A Soldier EP [RWCLTR019]

FONTAINE SMC - I Was A Soldier EP

A roundup of positive nostalgia from Fontaine SMC: two French artists and friends who share the same vision of electronic music. They have several project under other names, often axed on IDM/electro, but this time the joined the forces for a synthwave and punk flavor project. I was a soldier EP is a social criticism/journey into human fears and hard relationships, synthetized into an 80s look, dusty and raw sounding. A mix of punk dementia and the most intense dance music, the one that takes the joints and makes you move them well.

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Fontaine SMC – I Was A Soldier EP [RWCLTR019]