BEBORN BETON reveal ‘Last Chance’, a cool new clip taken from their forthcoming full-length Darkness Falls Again. The performance video of the groovy synth pop hit ‘Last Chance’.
BEBORN BETON comment:”Troubled boy meets emotionally depraved gynoid beneath silvery moon which then, for no adequately explored reason, fails to explode”, vocalist Stefan Netschio writes on behalf of the trio. “Last Chance!”
Watch the video here:
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Beborn Beton by Chris Ruiz
20th February 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
Hailing from Austin, Texas, electronic act Gleaming are deeply rooted in 80s synth pop, and while there are hints of gothic grooves and whatnot, the more obvious touchstone is mid- to late-80s Depeche Mode. But if opener ‘Rat Me Out’ is a clear access point with a strong hook, the first single, ‘Run Faster’ is starker, harder, more industrial, a thudding kick drum welded to a relentless bassline that nags away at your brain while calling to mind DAF. It’s a tense affair, and with lines like “the phone, the ego, the friends, the future, the body I’m in – all telling me to run”, we get an insight into the EP’s themes. The band describe the EP as ‘an ode to one’s former self and depression, habits, partners, family, friends, etc.,’ adding ‘It’s an attempt to bring closure to a darker past and to celebrate life in a more positive and meaningful sense.’
Closure, catharsis, celebration: it feels like all three to an extent. ‘Ashes’ is propelled by a busy beat and throbbing bass, and ‘The Voyager’ follows its path but ventures more toward Depeche Mode c84 crossed with Pretty Hate Machine era Nine Inch Nails – it’s dark, it’s synthy, but also accessible and feels light and perhaps less menacing than intended, in the way that early Ministry wanted to be harder than it was. The glitchy autotuned vocals don’t help: the never help anything, unless perhaps you’re Cher. It’s not a bad tune – there isn’t a bad tune on the EP – but the execution, if done differently, may have had more impact.
The seven-and-a quarter-minute title track is a low-tempo, slow-burning synth-led brooder, heavy with reflection and emotion and a sense of closure.
Showcasing a certain range within the stylistic confined of their genre of choice, Gleaming are an interesting proposition, with a sound that’s familiar and illusory, but not specifically derivative – and that’s an achievement.
Canadian dark-pop act The Birthday Massacre have just issued a video for ‘Precious Hearts’, a song included on their current album ‘Fascination’. The clip was cut to footage filmed at a show in their home city of Toronto in October 2022 during a North American tour to promote the album, shortly before they arrived in the UK to play a long-awaited (and sold out) ten date UK tour (which we dug here at AA).
Watch the video here:
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BM will be on tour in the US again from late April, with nine headlining shows bookending eleven further guest slots with Lacuna Coil. Their full itinerary can be seen below.
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12th December 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
The eponymous debut EP by South Carolina indie pop-rock duo The Yets is steeped in the tropes of quintessential vintage alternative pop, absorbing a range of influences, while keeping a clear eye on classic and ultimately accessible forms – embracing Fleetwood Mac and Cocteau Twins in equal measure, as the press release suggests with remarkable accuracy.
Robin Wilson has a superb voice, delicate, emotive, easy on the ear, and at the same time rich and gutsy. It’s key to the sound of The Yets, and the six songs on this debut EP really showcase both her versatility and that of their songwriting.
There’s a weird booming sound – not quite a beat, not quite a bass note – that cuts through the mellow drift of ‘Waterline’, and it’s one of those things that once you’re attuned to it, you can’t detune, like the duck in Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’ or the cowbell on ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’, but if you can ignore it, it’s a superbly-executed song with a clean guitar chug that keep it moving along nicely while the lead guitar chimes and washes melodically.
‘Remember’ is perfection, a layered, easy alt-rock tune that’s Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ and it floats along in a dreamy drift that closes out with a delicate guitar solo.
They strip things right back for ‘Lesser Evil’, which swings between brooding indie and moody post-punk with hints of Siouxsie, before spinning into ethereal shoegaze territory on the dreamy ‘Letter to a Boy’, which really does find the band revelling in the misty ethereal shadows of Cocteau Twins.
‘Fades to Grey’ makes an obvious reference to Visage, and the band’s 80s leanings are on clear display, but that’s where the connection severs: this is a smooth, atmospheric rippling piece with chiming, echo-heavy guitar that owes much to Disintegration-era Cure, and ‘Happy Now’ builds on that thickly atmospheric sound with a loping rhythm and layers of vocals that really fill out the sound as the guitars and it’s the most overtly goth song of the set.
With a broad pallet of tuneful wistfulness and textured, layered instrumentation, coupled with some smart and sensitive production, The Yets have landed with a seriously accomplished debut: there’s a lot happening here, and there’s a significant range but at the same time a cohesive feel to it.
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Photo: Gordon Backman
Before we wave adieu to 2022 – IST IST – pause for reflection with the philosophical: ‘Mary In The Black And White Room’.
This new single arrives as the Manchester post/punk frontrunners also confirm a series of UK headline shows for April 2023, with dates in Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, Birmingham, Bristol and London. Tickets will be on sale this Wednesday (7t December) at 10AM here.
A reminder of their keenly-anticipated third album ‘Protagonists’ (slated for Spring 2023 via Kind Violence Records), the track finds the band revealing one of its most cerebral, synth-driven moments.
With shades of classic OMD, The Cure and New Order, ‘Mary In The Black And White Room’ effervesces in the darkness with its potent blend of layered synthesisers, darting basslines, and labyrinthine lyrical intrigue.
“Mary…” is inspired by a thought experiment proposed by the philosopher Frank Jackson that has since become known as ‘the knowledge argument’ (or ‘Mary’s room’). Hypothesising the work of a scientist called Mary, who exists in a black and white world where she has extensive access to physical descriptions of colour, but no actual human perceptual experience of colour; Jackson’s theory wonders whether Mary will gain new knowledge if she actually experiences seeing colour.
Speaking about the track, IST IST’s Adam Houghton says:
“Mary in the Black and White Room is about trying to figure out if experience trumps knowledge. See ‘the Knowledge Argument’ where the subject, Mary, exists in a black and white world but has extensive descriptions of colour, but you don’t know if she knows what they actually look like until exposed to it. Really interesting stuff.”
Absorbed by themes explored in Jackson’s theory of physicalism, IST IST create an unconventional love-song-of-sorts. As if reaching out from another dimension, frontman Adam Houghton delivers a cascade of cryptic couplets and non sequiturs in his rich baritone, looking to add colour to a world that could be so much more than monochrome.
The single arrives with an official lyric video created by Shaolin Pete, which elegantly reflects the themes explored in ‘Mary in the Black and White Room’. Watch it here:
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We Become Strangers is the debut EP from the new darkwave project, The Bleak Assembly, a collaboration between Kimberly of Bow Ever Down and Michael Smith of Fiction8. While there are a few electronic textures here and there, We Become Strangers is straight-up post-punk and darkwave. Guitars, drums, and songwriting with hooks for days. This EP sits more comfortably alongside Siouxsie & the Banshees, ACTORS, and Bootblacks than it does VNV Nation or Covenant.
Add to that list Skeletal Family, Ghost dance, later March Violets. It’s pure vintage mid-80s goth.
Regarding the nature of ‘change’ that inspired the EP, Michael Smith states, “if there’s a theme to this EP, it’s in recognizing how we’ve changed as artists and as people. What if you met your younger self and your younger self didn’t even recognize you? That’s what We Become Strangers is about. Kimberly goes on to say, “It’s a strong feeling of ‘being cut from the past’. It’s a little alienating but also very liberating.”
Listen here. Do:
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eMERGENCY heARTS – 6th May 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
SINE’s new 5 song EP, Mantis 1, is the first in a trilogy of EPs, “Mantis 1, 2 & 3”. The hype for the release pulls a spotlight on the involvement of a name producer, with the EP being ‘produced by SINE founder, Rona Rougeheart in collaboration with esteemed audio engineer Charles Godfrey at Scary American Studio in Austin, TX. Godfrey, in his two decade plus career, has been engineer/producer on over 75 recordings, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’, It’s Blitz! and Mosquito, The Black Angels, Indigo Meadow, and notable work for…Trail of Dead, SWANS, among so many more’. No question: Godfrey’s resumé is impressive, and there’s similarly no question that a decent producer can make a huge, huge difference, with great production having the capacity to render a recording far more than the sum of its parts (Joy Division simply would not have been the same without Martin Hannett’s work, however unconventional and difficult his methods), while equally, poor production can be crippling. Then again, engineering is perhaps equally important: it’s worth noting that Steve Albini doesn’t consider himself to be a producer, but his engineering skills have brought the life to so many albums, and not just the ones he’s renowned for. Still, for all that, you can’t polish a turd: you still need songs and for them to be played in a way that does the material some kind of justice.
Everything comes together just so on this release, and one question I often consider is how close to the artistic ambition is the end result? I have a sense that Mantis I is everything Rougeheart had in her head at conception.
‘Attack’ certainly brings plenty, a combative, dark disco thud of a beat pitched against a relentless throb of synthesised bass. In contrast, ‘Until’ is more overtly pop, but it’s pop in the way Garbage are pop – eclectic, savvy, the production simultaneously crisp and grimy. ‘Future Whores’ is stark, and if there’s something of an early New Order vibe about it, there’s equally some early Pet Shop Boys, and that’s by no means a criticism. Then again, the expensive, yawning notes border on the mellow new age grooves of The Beloved, while the distorted vocals and thumping bass are more industrial… in combination, it crashes hard in the domain of industrial shoegaze, and if that’s not yet been recognised as a thing, now is the time because it’s here and it’s in your face.
Things get murkier and meaner on ‘Blurred’, where I’m reminded of The Human League’s ‘Being Boiled’, only with a harder technoindustrial edge, and the pulsing, bulbous bass is dominated by Rougeheart’s blank, robotic monotone vocal, that’s treated with a metallic edge and some grainy reverb.
Closer ‘Control’ burrows deeper into the darkness, a shuddering mass of slow velocity – yet for all the crushing grind and gnarly digital distortion, the dislocation and thunderous tribal drums, it still slides in a truly aching bridge with a magnificent vocal melody that evokes wistful summer scenes, before crushing them like ant underfoot in a driving death-disco slam.
It all adds up to a meaty and pretty powerful release, and if the idea of releasing three EPs instead of an album seems perverse, it will be interesting to see how SINE utilise the format after such a strong start.
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Futura Futura Records – 6th April 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
Ah, romantic love… that all-encompassing, all-immersive burst of excitement that comes with the new. It’s that euphoria that drives people crazy, that people spend half their lives chasing, only to find it elusive, and it’s the blinding dazzlement of this ‘love’ that’s inspired infinite pop songs and poems through the ages: it was the very cornerstone of the tropes for the Elizabethan sonnet, and not a lot has changed in five hundred years, in real terms. It’s not that it’s a myth, it’s just that it’s fleeting at best.
Subterranean Lovers know this when they sing ‘I want to love you like a mother / I want to love you like a king / I want to love you like a god / I want to love you more than I’ve loved anything / I want to love you like a poet / I want to love you like an artist…’ and this makes ‘Brilliant Things’ a savvy slice of gothy pop.
Building from simple acoustic guitar and vocal and introducing the other instrumental elements of drums, bass, synth in succession, ‘Brilliant Things’ may glow brightly, but there’s a dark undertone beneath the lustrous, basking glory of these elevated aspirations, as if the weight of them drags such perfection beyond reach. This, in itself, brings a twist of anguish, the realisation that perfection is even more unobtainable than that magnificent, pedestal-standing object of desire.
‘You’re silver and gold / you’re mine to hold / you’re everything’ hints at the all-consuming and ultimately potentially damaging way obsession isn’t healthy, and the delivery is bold and dramatic, with a captivating vocal melody that’s enriched by enticing layers of harmony that leave you aching for more. Brilliant indeed.
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Greek dark pop artist Lia Hide has recently unveiled ‘Proposal’, the first single from their new album, The Missing Fourth Guest.
The ‘Proposal’ is an invitation to a debate, a dispute, a symposium, where the three people involved are discussing the ideas that puzzle them throughout their lives. The lyrics are weaved in a dialogue between the lead singer and her alter-ego.
The ‘Proposal’ video was shot at the historic Bagkeion Hotel, in Omonoia square, Athens, Greece. The three band members are investigating elements of the Timeaus (Plato) dialogue, getting ready in their rooms for a later dinner (“Dinner” is also the title of the next single & the musical sibling of “Proposal”), in the Timeaus Sonata, the conceptual three-part work of the album .
Watch it here:
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Darkwave act VVMPYRE begins a new reign in blood in 2022 with a horrific new single ‘Offering’. Inspired by vampire cults and 70’s cult horror films, ‘Offering’ is a track that personifies the leaders of these cults in an alluring anthem. VVMPYRE creates a modernized sound with a rekindled inspiration from artists like The Sisters Of Mercy and Inkubus Sukkubus.
In a search for the right voice, VVMPYRE reached out to CORLYX singer Caitlin Stokes. VVMPYRE’s twisted imagination is met with a set of lyrics as if the chant to a ceremony against the backdrop of increasingly massive and infectious melodies.
Together with VVMPYRE’s production, ‘Offering’ is a monstrous mix of classic electrogoth, 70’s horror scores, and modern darkwave to form a bloody anthem that unleashes a barrage of hooks. Brandon Ashley of DTuned Brighton Productions and The Dark adds a gripping guitar to the mix, building the track up further in the chorus and bridge, only equally met by VVMPYRE’s haunting organ melodies.
Check the video here:
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Aural Aggravation 