Blackest Ever Black have performed an interesting exercise in issuing this new 12″ from Tropic Of Cancer along with the Archive: The Downwards Singles collection; as it allows you to hear first-hand how Camella Lobo’s band has progressed musically in a few short years. This three track 12″ is her first new music since that excellent debut Tropic of Cancer LP, and finds Lobo working with Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv.
Blackest Ever Black serve up a double dose of Tropic Of Cancer goodness, with the fresh material from Camella Lobo complemented by this Archive: The Downwards Singles 12″. The smarter cookies out there will glean the content from the title, with Blackest Ever Black gathering together the earliest Tropic of Cancer material issued through the DO sublabel of Karl O’Connor’s Downwards label. These three tracks were recorded in Tropic Of Cancer’s original iteration of Lobo and Juan ‘Silent Servant’ Mendez, a time when the band was exploring a more explicitly bleaker, hazier sound. The motorik stomp and yelping Mendez vocals of closing track “Be Brave” remains a thrilling experience to sink into.
Dark Entries digs deeper in to the archives of Severed Heads, one of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene. “Petrol”, originally titled “Lamborghini”, was written by Garry Bradbury and Tom Ellard in 1981.
Dark Entries Records reissuesthe LP ‘Experiments in Incest’ from the 80s UK-based Minimal Synth band Shoc Corridor. The founders of this project, Chris Davis and Israel-born Nogi Prass, who eventually had to leave the band because there were problems with her Visa, started making music in 1979, influenced by German electronic bands Kraftwerk, Neu! and recent developments in UK Post Punk like Public Image Ltd., and formed a band, adding by Paul O’Carroll, Paul Humphries and Andy Garnham to the line-up. The departure of Nogi and Chris, who left with her, from the UK in late 1982 made it virtually impossible to continue with Shoc Corridor, but despite that, they released two LPs in 1983 and 1984 (Experiments in Incest and Train of Events). The band eventually disbanded after the suicide of bass player Paul Humphries following the release of Train of Events.
“Liquidation” is the first ever vinyl compilation of Liquid G.’s cassette recordings, taking you on a journey through the underground of the Belgian Electro Industrial scene. Each song was written, produced, recorded and performed by solely by Peter Van Bogaert between 1987-1989. Liquid G. captures the DIY synth-punk ethos of Cabaret Voltaire, The Screamers, and Nervous Gender. Six of the eleven songs on the album are instrumentals, and full of disturbing drum machines, stratified synthesizers, and deep, distorted bass-lines. The core of Liquid G.’s home studio included the Korg Poly-800, Roland TR-505, Roland MT-32, and Boss flanger and delays.
Second Layer was a side project of Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey, members of post punk band The Sound. The music was bleak, detached, and desolate, but very beautiful. Honest songwriting and a harsh sonic backdrop set them apart from their peers. Second Layer’s World of Rubber, first released on Cherry Red way back in 1981 – some two years after the duo’s first outing on 7” – has long been considered something of an industrial classic by those in the know. Here, it gets a deserved re-press from the folks at Dark Entries. 34 years on, it still retains the power to shock, with Adrian Borland and Graham Green’s raw, weighty mix of post-punk basslines, sharp guitars, fuzzy electronics, tape loops and basic drum machine grooves still sounding deliciously fresh. Certainly, it’s comparable to many more celebrated releases of the time, and arguably more spontaneous in feel.
Emotional Rescue returns to the post war music of West Germany and the work of Dominik Von Senger and his cohorts based around the Dunkelziffer project. This special “Sampler” EP of recordings was produced as their part in Cologne’s Stollwerck art complex, that acted as a home and inspiration to their musical experiments. Based within the disused industrial warehouses spaces of Stollwerck, a mix of post-hippies, punks and anarchists created a community within that fed off each other’s artistic endeavours.
Emotional Rescue returns to the early 80’s Downtown NYC post punk / new wave scene with Plus Instruments – collecting their best and rarest songs on one groove laden EP. 4 tracks of pure Downtown punk-dub-funk, all with the nonchalant Euro-style delivery of Truus de Groot. Coming with extended unreleased versions, the originals were collected from sought after EPs, an obscure compilation LP and fiishes with a never before released song – this is history.
Now Berlin-based duo The KVB land on Geoff Barrow’s Invada label for the first in a series of releases. Mirror Being differs from most releases from The KVB as the pair’s deep set vocals, a key component of their sound, are largely absent from the 10 tracks but their reverb soaked mastery of guitars and analogue gear is still very much evident throughout.
No More are a band from Kiel, Germany, founded in the summer of 1979. Their music is rooted in early Post Punk / No Wave. No More began as a quartet with Andy A. Schwarz (vocals, guitar, bass), Tina Sanudakura (synthesizers), Christian Darc (drums, vocals) and Thomas Welz (bass, vocals). In 1982 No More released the mini-album “A Rose Is A Rose’ on 10′. Songs on this mini-LP convey the desolate and bleak attitude of German youth in the early 1980s. This reissue compiles all 8 tracks from the mini-LP, both tracks from the Suicide Commando’ 7′ plus 3 demos from 1982.
Traxx – Formulated-Unconventional Theories
“Nowadays, artists are afraid of diverting from a well-known stylistic path which seems the style dictates the track, not the maker.
Traxx is a totally different story.
although a lot of people appreciate it, most don’t understand Traxx’ approach to music as its been labelled diverse and eclectic which shows how significant it is for him to follow the innovative footsteps of his heroes.
in this distinctive podcast he provides a dramatic euphoric high energy, that opens gates to an esoteric and unpredictable sound beyond boundaries endlessly exploring unruled electronics of unrestricted, under the table music with no boundaries pushing the vision forward+expanding into the modern day of his interpretation.”
Hailing from Florence, Daniele Ciullini was part of the forward-thinking TRAX collective, whose pan european art/music collaboration network acted as a proto-social network decades in advance of the internet. This compilation collects Ciullini’s self released ‘Domestic Exile’ cassette (1983) as well as selections from a series of other compilations(1982 to 1986).
Captured Tracks present ‘Deeper’, the third full-length studio recording from American post-punk band The Soft Moon.
Cititrax presents a 4 song EP by Broken English Club. Sparse vocals and shards of live instrumentation over heavy, stuttering beats and bleak synths. The tracks on this EP are rich and darkly atmospheric, pulsating loudly through a smog filled dance floor. A subversive spin on dance music, the blank-stared, pin-point-focused electronics and layers of noise betray no/wave and post punk influences, dragging together industrial experimentation and pitch-black techno.
Nite Fields will release their debut album ‘Depersonalisation’ on vinyl, CD and digital through Los Angles label Felte, and in Australia on cassette and digital through Lost Race.
‘Depersonalisation’ was conceived and completed over a four-year period in all three distinct capitals. Recordings were completed almost entirely by the band members in over twenty locations including garages, bedrooms, borrowed studios, stairwells and a restaurant dining room after hours. Lead singer and songwriter Danny Venzin is opinionated, passionate, and uncompromising, whether releasing works on his own label Lost Race or maintaining his diligent focus on a unified (though not narrow-minded) Nite Fields aesthetic, regardless of what music is currently in fashion. His band mates Chris Campion, Liza Harvey and Michael Whitney consist of deeply immersed players in a tight-nit local D.I.Y. scene.
Continue reading “Nite Fields – Depersonalisation [FLT020LP]”
Neon is not a common name for italian post punk lovers. Born in Florence, the cradle of peninsula’s wave, they were probably the first important post punk gothic band in our country and they are still nowadays one of the most active band in 80’s Italian new wave time, still marking Italian rock history. In 1980, the band got off to an electronic start with the single Information of death, and later, through several line up changes, it achieves to synthetize a mix of obsessive electro sounds, obscure athmospheres and quite original pop melodies which take shapes in later works like Tapes of darkness (1981), Obsession (1982), My blues is you (1983), Dark age (1984); in 1985 Rituals sanctioned Neon as the best Italian new wave band of that year.
Mannequin Records announce the reissue of one of the most important Dutch Wave bands The Actor, with their seminal 1982 tape “Exploded View”. “In the beginning of the eighties, a new phenomenon emerged: home taping. This way of recording resulted in a lot of noise. But that was less important then getting one’s music out to the public. A well known label for cassette bands in those days was the dutch Trumpett Tapes. They were the first to publish the music of The Actor, who became their top selling cassette band in 1982 and 1983. The Actor’s first release was Exploded View in 1982. The songs – sung both in English and German – often related to fashion, modernism, dancing and appearence. This made The Actor “quite fashionable.”
Accurately describing the sound of Dollkraut, aka producer Pascal Pinkert, has always been tricky. Over the years, his sporadic 12″ singles have variously touched on analogue disco, krautrock, deep house, Italo, nu-jazz and beatbox electro. This belated debut album – released some five years after his debut 12″ dropped – continues this theme. It flits between styles at will – bold African rhythms, post-punk, soundtrack schtick, Serge Gainsbourg style sleaze, odd guitar-laden lo-fi rock sketches – whilst retaining a unique dustiness and aural sensibility. It’s a fine set, all told, and in the circumstances holds together remarkably well.
Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem have teamed up to release “Catholic”, the lost opus of disco pioneer Patrick Cowley and Indoor Life vocalist Jorge Socarras. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary and influential people in the canon of disco music, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music, “The San Francisco Sound”. “Catholic” is a genre-bending concept album that ranges from minimalistic proto-techno to synth-driven post-punk. It shows a much broader range than any Cowley or Socarras material available and gives a totally new perspective to one of the most inspiring eras in music history. Patrick forges a unique electronic sound from his collection of synthesizers, modified guitars, and self-constructed equipment while Jorge’s vocals go from hypnotic to camp, singing about gay love juju and tackling classics by Donovan and Stoller & Leiber.
The Hipodrome Of Music 