Posts Tagged ‘electro’

ant-zen – 12th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

First – the format! So much is being made of the vinyl renaissance right now, and much as I love vinyl, it’s hard to be entirely comfortable with this comeback, in this form. Back in the 90s, when CDs were in the ascendence, I often bought vinyl because it was cheaper: I could pick up an LP for £7.50 when a new-release CD was £11. I still have the receipts in my vinyl copies of PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me and Pandemonium by Killing Joke, among other treasures. Now, vinyl is a luxury item. Even a standard LP is around £25, and many are pressed on two pieces of heavyweight vinyl and cost closer to £40, or more if released on Record Store Day. This isn’t right. It’s not honouring the format, it’s another example of exploitation.

But this is rather different, and altogether cooler on so many levels: ant-zen have brought us this release by Kojoohar & Frank Ursus in the form of a 7” EP, with two tracks on each side. You can’t blame them for the price tag given production costs, but the unique hand-printed inlays, etc., at least make each copy unique and make this release a million miles removed from the capitalist conveyor belt.

The thing that matters here is that this release is completely suited to this retro format: a 10” or LP release would have been extravagant, indulgent, and frankly, ill-keeping.

It’s worth quoting the liner note for the back-story here, too: ‘The spark that ignited this collaboration came from a conversation between KOJOOHAR and FRANK URSUS – aka Te/DIS – about the kojoohar album that has just been released at the time and about angst pop and its position in the music scene. talking about new tracks kojoohar was working on, the decision was made to start a collaboration.’

And so we’re presented with Frost Drought, which they describe as ‘a 4-track ep that offers edgy angst pop with analog, gripping synthesizer sounds, metallic rhythms and enigmatic melodies, complementing by frank ursus’ vocals… music and lyrics of FROST DROUGHT describe a world of isolation, mistrust, alienation and the individual’s distance from itself. left alone in the dark…’

Entering the ‘debris field’, we’re presented with dark synths, groaning, whining, whistling, and a slow-tempo-echo-heavy beat. If the baritone vocal is distinctly from the gothier end of post-punk, the instrumentation is equal parts post-punk and ultra-stark, bleak hip-hop. ‘never compromise’ pushes into stark, dark, electro territory, in the realm of mid-80s Depeche Mode. Ursus’ vocals are commanding, but so dark, and the music is so claustrophobic as to be suffocating. ‘never compromise’ sounds like a manifesto, and whipping snares sounds crack and reverberate in an alienating fog of synth, and with hints of Depeche Mode’s ‘Little 15’, it’s as bleak as hell, too. ‘threshold’ is dark and boldly theatrical, like Bauhaus battling it out in the studio with Gary Numan.

There’s no light here: this is dark and it feels like a dragging weight on your chest, on your heart. Drawing on early 80s electro but adding the clinicality of contemporary production – and a dash of Nine Inch Nails – Frost Drought is a challenging work, thick, dense, and intense, it’s a heavy listen, and one that’s incredibly intense.

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EYE – the new band from Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard (MWWB) singer-songwriter/musician Jessica Ball – has announced the arrival of their eagerly awaited debut album, ‘Dark Light’ set for release on 26th April via New Heavy Sounds (Shooting Daggers, MWWB, Blacklab)

"These songs have been many years in the making… Some of these ideas were crafted before MWWB, this is something I’ve always wanted to do. Over the last couple of years, I’ve spent some time on finishing and crafting these ideas and pieces of music into songs. Some were snippets of lyrics from my early twenties which reflect on what seems like a different person. I think it’s quite poetic how it’s all come together now.

I was also encouraged after finding musicians who understood the vision and style I was trying to achieve, and of course my experience of being in MWWB. I’m a guitarist above all, and I loved reconnecting with guitar again. It feels like all my influences and favourite styles have come together in this album. Shoegaze, doom, folk, dream pop… It’s a real mix bag but as a whole, it represents many different stages of my life and tells a story. 

The album ultimately is quite introspective yet lyrically loose enough to be open to interpretation – I’ve always been a fan of songs that seem to perfectly slot into the situation I’m experiencing and not too specific to one person’s experience… I think that comes across in this album.”

Jessica relocated from Wrexham to join her new partner, veteran Welsh musician Gid Goundrey (Gulp, Ghostlawns, Martin Carr), in Cardiff just as the pandemic era dawned. Confined to their small Grangetown flat, they quite naturally began making music together.

Having earned acclaim and a fervent fan following for her role in MWWB, Ball took the opportunity to compose songs that were all her own – nuanced, lyrical, and hypnotically distinctive.

Triggered in part by the existential dread looming outside as well as the sudden ill health of her dear friend, MWWB guitarist Paul “Dave” Davies, then fighting for life after a Covid-related stroke.

With Goundrey on drums (for the first time in his musical career) and joined by keyboardist Johnny TK, Eye experimented with sounds to match Ball’s melodic songs, traversing a diverse spectrum of dark folk, dreampop, IDM and psychedelic doom, to create sometimes heavy and foreboding drones, alongside spare but still richly textured sonics.

The result is their debut album ‘Dark Light’. An intensely atmospheric fusion of emotionally charged songcraft and inspired sonic energy. The clue is in the album’s paradoxical title. Chilling and even bleak melodies with arrangements daringly and deliberately stripped down and minimal. Revealing a kinship with sonic bed-fellows Mazzy Star, Chelsea Wolfe or even Portishead, which can be heard on first single ‘In Your Night’. Jessica comments,

"Our first release ‘In Your Night’ represents Eye musically, conceptually and lyrically and I’m proud for this to be the first song that everyone hears from us… Light and dark, night and day, quiet and loud is the running theme throughout this song and album as a whole. Whether you’re up close to a song, or listening to the album as a whole, these themes will be ever present throughout. We’re playing around with these two extremes sonically and what these represent emotionally and mentally. I feel that nothing takes you on a journey more effectively than a good build up, or something happening unexpectedly, much like real life. We are just the eye that witnesses it all."

Listen to ‘In Your Night’ here:

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NYC-based electronic punk band LIP CRITIC have detailed their anticipated debut album – Hex Dealer – out 17th May via Partisan Records. To coincide with the announcement, the band has shared the album’s lead single and accompanying music video: ‘Milky Max’.

‘Milky Max’ is a pulverising slab of electronic hardcore. The song’s shapeshifting groove anchors a sound that’s theatrical, captivatingly irreverent, and completely outside so much of modern experimental music. Meanwhile Bret Kaser’s vocal delivery feels like it’s being delivered by a cult leader who has occupied the announcer’s booth at a football stadium and refuses to come out (“All my life I just wanted to live / Now I gotta die just because of what I did”).

The official video for ‘Milky Max’ showcases a fully playable video game inspired by the song and designed by Jesse Natter (brother of Lip Critic drummer Ilan Natter). Direct link to play the video game HERE.

Check the video here:

‘Milky Max’ follows previous singles ‘It’s The Magic’ and ‘The Heart,’ which earned early critical acclaim from NME (“on their way to becoming the next great NYC band”), Paste (“an apocalyptic wasteland of NYC’s best underground punk”), Rolling Stone (‘Songs You Need to Know’), Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC 6 Music, and Matt Wilkinson (“totally essential”).

Produced in collaboration by vocalist Bret Kaser and Connor Kleitz, ‘Hex Dealer’ represents an evolution of the eclectic style that the group began cultivating on earlier projects. Drummers Danny Eberle and Ilan Natter combine breakbeats and pingy snares with heavy cymbal and tom work, creating a singular mixture of classic punk/hardcore and electronic styles. The end result is 12 frantic tracks of postmodern pop for the genreless future. A project of wide-reaching sonic and thematic curiosity, above all ‘Hex Dealer’ is an inquisition into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption.

Audiences have also already been captured by the sheer energy and undeniable chemistry as they toured the US, sharing stages with IDLES, Screaming Females, and Geese, and made their way across the UK / EU including a stop at the Pitchfork Festival in Paris. Lip Critic will tour extensively behind ‘Hex Dealer’, including stops at SXSW, End Of The Road and further UK dates. UK dates are listed below.

LIP CRITIC – UK TOUR DATES:
13 May – The Louisiana – Bristol, UK
14 May – The Deaf Institute (The Lodge) – Manchester, UK
15 May – The Windmill – London, UK
29 Aug – 01 Sep – End of the Road – UK

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13th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Another day, the organic evolution of another obscure splinter-genre or a genre cooked up by the music press, or, indeed a band themselves. Given the ever-expanding void in the space where the music press used to exist, that particular scenario is increasingly unlikely, meaning genre demarcations tend to now originate by word of mouth among fans, or from bands. And much as there’s a heavy cringe element to the way in which the music press historically created genres, from goth to shoegaze and Britpop, alongside a whole bunch which failed to ignite, like Romo and The New Wave of New Wave. Sometimes, trying to build a pigeonhole slips into the domain of trying too hard, and more often than not, genre labels simply serve as shortcuts which bypass the requirement to engage in meaningful dialogue as to what an act is actually doing, what they really sound like,

And so the arrival of ‘Long Divide’ by ‘Seattle-based ‘turbowave’ pioneers, Dual Analog serves as an educational piece. They pitch themselves as ‘combining New Wave and Heavy Metal into a brand new genre.’

There’s nothing wrong with ‘Long Divide’, but it doesn’t sound especially metal or new wave, carrying most of the trappings of 80s electropop – although image-wise, there’s a whole heap of 80s hair-rock influence going on, with bandanas and studs all in the mix. And hair. Lots and lots of hair.

‘Long Divide’ isn’t really the sound of bandanas and studs and hair, and is more Depeche Mode circa Songs of Faith and Devotion with some guitars played lowed but mixed low, meaning the synths dominate the sound. The vocals register in that same baritone region of Dave Gahan and a whole host of post punk / goth bands, but there’s something about the delivery – level, tone, pitch, I’m not sure – which hovers on the cusp of uncomfortable… but as the song progresses, it seems to slot together rather better. And then they whip out a big old guitar solo near the end and boom, you’ve got you hair rock fix.

Time was I’d have wrapped up a review with a pithy summation., but this feels increasingly forced and corny, and at the same time, presenting a verdict feels little different to casting oneself into the mould of a star-rating – it’s arbitrary and lazy in equal measure. As much as ascribing a genre is a short-cut, so is declaring an album a 7/10; it’s a box-ticking exercise that appeases the lowest common denominator. A hedge-betting 6 or 7 out of 10 is the coward’s way of saying you’re being polite and sitting on the fence. Whereas I’m ok with saying this is… ok, so-so, middling to me but likely to find a solid fanbase.

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Negative Gain Productions – 9th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Pitched as ‘a battle cry against the facade of perfection that suffocates an authentic connection’ and a song that’s ‘about the dark, often unseen journey of seeking forgiveness and finding solace in the unexpected kindness of strangers’ ‘Necessity Meal’ is perhaps the ultimate hybrid of everything that’s gothy and on the darker side of electro/synth pop.

I’d wager it’s pretty much impossible to write about ‘Necessity Meal’ without recourse to Depeche Mode. That isn’t to say it’s just some rip-off, so much as an indication of just how deep and broad their influence is felt at the darker end of the electro spectrum.

‘Necessity Meal’ is built around a rolling drum beat with a harsh snare, and some brittle, trilling synths pave an intro that gives way to some guitars that are by turns cutty and deliver strains of feedback. The verses are a bit rappy / spoken and I can’t help but think of it being like a gothy take on grebo and it sort of works but sort of doesn’t – in the way that The Sugarcubes worked but didn’t: you know, you either dug – or more likely tolerated – the Einar bits, or outright hated them as rubbish intrusions into some great songs, but ultimately, it worked because the Björk bits and the overall thing was more than worth the clash. This feels confused and confusing, a bit messy. But then, as front man Mychael says of the song, “In the end of it all, life can be rather messy, and I can sing if I want to, at my own pity-party!” In the mix there’s a bunch of noise that casts a nod to Nine Inch Nail, and…

…And so it is that from all of this sonic jostling emerges a magnificent refrain: the vocals suddenly come on like David Bowie, and with a heavy sarcasm, deliver the line, ‘Thank you, thank you for the guilt’. It’s unexpectedly, and almost inexplicably, affecting, but somehow, in this moment, the whole song, and everything around it makes some sort of sense.

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18th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

As my sweep-up of singles released a few weeks back but still in the later stages of 2023 continues, we come to John X Belmonte’s ‘Under the Stars of Andromeda’. The New Yorker has been slipping out slabs of dark alternative pop since 2020, and has maintained a fairly steady output these last three years. Citing David Bowie, Depeche Mode and Kate Bush as influences, he promises ‘Haunting atmospheres, beautiful melodies, driving rhythms, and rich sonorous vocals [which] draw the listener into his musical dream world.’

With perhaps the exception of Depeche Mode from Black Celebration and later, these touchstones don’t really convey just how gothy Belmonte’s work is. ‘Under the Stars of Andromeda’ is a dark, stark electro cut that pulsates and has all the ingredients of the kind of electrogoth which started coming through in the mid 90s. There are chilly layers of synth which drift and hang like a freezing fog to conjure murky atmosphere, and as the track evolves, it feels that we’ve left earth and are being carried through clouds of dust particles, floating free of any gravitational pull, and a thumping techno beat cuts in and takes things stratospheric.

It’s the vocal which really defines the sound, and the genre leanings, too: Belmonte’s baritone croon is theatrical, taking obvious cues from Andrew Eldritch and Peter Murphy, and it’s subject to heavy processing and compression, meaning that while it sits tightly within, rather than above the music, in terms of not only mix but tonal range, it feels detached, dehumanised. It’s effective, in that it sounds menacing, and sends a shiver down your spine, as you wonder just what he has in mind when he says ‘we’ll find a better place.’

The synth sounds may be trancey and expansive, but clocking in at four minutes, ‘Under the Stars of Andromeda’ is neat and compact, structurally, and the production is faultless.

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Chicago-based electronic pop artist Brittany Bindrim has released her debut single, ‘Obelisk’, today on Metropolis Records, accompanied by a beautiful yet dystopian video directed by Simona Noreik. Known for her catchy melodies and powerhouse vocal performances in the post-industrial rock band I:Scintilla, Bindrim now ventures into foreign sonic terrain as a solo artist with this hard-hitting, edgy song packed with punishing beats and harsh synthesisers.

This new chapter of Bindrim’s career takes her into experimental territory along with producer Matt McJunkins (A Perfect Circle, Puscifer, Eagles of Death Metal, Poppy). While the lyric for ‘Obelisk’ explores themes of tribalism, political divides, collective trauma and a surrendering to peace, Bindrim states that its music “is an interplay between the words and harder-edged, percussive musical elements. The heavier drums and the main driving bass synth line were written first, which then inspired a pleading vocal melody. I had previously written a lyrical seedling that was close to what ended up in the chorus lines, which I thought fit perfectly and helped spawn the rest of the lyric in conjunction with the harder, marching energy of the music.”

‘Obelisk’ is included on an album entitled ‘Velella Velella’ that is set for release on 8th March 2024. “The songwriting process for every song was a little different, but I didn’t try to force ideas or overthink things,” she continues. “Each song developed very naturally and instinctively."

From moody, ethereal ballads to gritty dance bangers, ‘Velella Velella’ showcases both the versatility and evolution of Bindrim’s work. Channelling transformation, sociopolitical climates and explorations to understand the darker side of human nature, her vulnerable and unapologetic lyrics showcase themes of self-discovery, empathy, apathy, disillusionment and growth.

Watch the video for ‘Obelisk’ here:

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Cleopatra Records – 8th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The goth crowd are an odd bunch. Like many subcultures, there’s a strong tribalism ingrained among them, and not even simply the older adherents or trad goths. There’s a perplexing contradiction here, in that a subculture born out of a broad church of outsiders should be so defensive and exclusive, even antagonistic towards those outside their club, while at the same time many are the most broad-minded and accommodating people you could encounter. I suspect the less accommodating are keen to protect their thing from people who aren’t really into it. Casuals, weekend goths, emos and metallers who misrepresent what it is to be goth… yeah, there’s a logic to not want to be tarred with the same mascara brush as some.

In my experience, some goth gigs – and I have been to many, although can’t claim to have been ‘there’ in the early 80s when it was all starting out because I simply wasn’t of an age – do seem to attract more than their share of ‘gother than thou’ posers, and while my collection is very heavy on vintage goth records (and CDs) and my wardrobe is 90% black (as Andrew Eldritch once quipped, and I paraphrase, it saves on laundry), I’ve always felt that I’m not goth enough for the weekend tribal gatherings in Whitby.

This is all to say that I get where Neon Funeral are coming from with this release. The New Jersey-based darkwave/post-punk band, are on Cleopatra Records, which has some pretty strong goth credentials. But then no doubt there will be British goths who will say that it’s an American label and the Americans don’t really ‘get’ goth and created their own strain and yadda yadda yadda.

As the blurbage explains, ‘The EP’s theme is based upon the band feeling alienated from the goth scene. The name of the EP, Banned From The Goth Club was given because of the band’s challenge in finding their audience given their contradictory sound.

The band states, “The goth audience can’t exactly get fully immersed into the music because of the aggression and intensity of the vocals and the hardcore scene can’t exactly understand the softer and dance-driven instrumentals for moshing. We once performed at a goth venue and seemed out of place and out of touch with the audience. We then coined the phrase ‘Banned From The Goth Club’ to welcome the eclectic sound and introduce it playfully.” As is to accentuate this point, the last track on the EP is a cover of Eddie Murphy’s 80s foray into music-making, ‘Party All The Time’.

‘A Void’ is probably too synthy for the traditionalists who like their guitars, trebly and drenched in chorus – but then the switch to gritty, snarling vocals are too metal for the darkwave fans. Of course, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but what do you do when the people are ultra-picky and pedantic? In the words of Valor Kand – fuck ‘em! It’s a cracking tune, dreamy on the surface but with a heavy dash of nightmare in there. On ‘Avolition’, the heavy synths and hyperactive programmed drumming, melded to solid bass and overlaid with theatrical vocals bring all the ingredients of 90s goth as represented by the likes of Suspiria and the Nightbreed Roster (although thankfully not Every New Dead Ghost). ‘High Tech Low Life’ is short – a mere two minutes and fifty seconds – and gloomy, a droning, drifting synth that lands between Faith era Cure and New Order circa Movement, but with some roaring metal vocals, before it skips into something that’s more like The Mission on crack and fronted by Carl McCoy. All to often, hearing the popular elements of goth being jigsawed together is a bit of a yawn, but it would be way off to describe this as derivative. With its harder edge, Banned From The Goth Club isn’t going to appeal to a large portion of the crowd, particularly the trads and the purists, and it’s not one for the dreamwave, darkwave, or cybergoths either. But for anyone who isn’t set on genre limitations, and with ears, and who likes it dark and a shade gnarly, this is a winner.

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Teeth of the Sea have shared the video for new track ‘Butterfly House’ taken from their upcoming album, Hive (Rocket Recordings, 6th Oct).

‘Butterfly House’ marks a new journey for Teeth Of The Sea. Always fans of synth-pop and Italo-disco, a combination of serendipity and instinct led them to combine forces with vocalist and songwriter Kath Gifford (Snowpony, Sleazy Tiger, The Wargs) to create a radiant shard of neon-tinted melancholia. Less visited by the spectres of Baltimora, Bobby O and Laura Branigan than it is a haunting ode to loss and dislocation rendered in vivid colours, it’s a song that marks a meeting point between the dancefloor and the ether.

Watch the video here:

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Fundamental to Teeth Of The Sea’s mission thus far is that this band can go anywhere and make short work of any obstacles in their path. Unfettered by genre distinctions or expectations, the only limits of this trio – comprising Sam Barton, Mike Bourne and Jimmy Martin – are those of its imagination. It therefore follows that inspiration flowed into Hive from all dimensions, with the band’s sphere of influence – the science fiction, trash culture and cinematic atmospherics by which they’ve fuelled their mission thus far  – expanding to take in everything from Italo-disco to minimal techno, from dubbed-out studio madness to their most brazen forays thus far into pop songwriting. Here is a headspace where the psychic charges from records by Labradford, Nurse With Wound, Vangelis, The Knife, Nine Inch Nails and John Barry can happily co-exist.

These disparate pathways cohere and coalesce to create a vivid experience rich with emotion and intrigue. A commission to create a live soundtrack at London’s Science Museum for a documentary on the Apollo moon landings gave flight to the trilogy of tracks – Artemis, Æther and Apollo which are summarily imbued with the dreamlike wonder and existential peril of the mission itself. A collaboration with vocalist Kath Gifford (Snowpony, The Wargs, Sleazy Tiger) set loose ‘Butterfly House’, which transmutes synthpop stylings into something uniquely radiant, haunting and melancholic. Get With The Program – sung by Mike Bourne – is meanwhile no less than a noise-fuelled, speaker-shaking electro-industrial banger.

Hive is more than just a transformative force from subterranean origins. It’s an alchemical headspace where monochrome animates into vivid colour. It may not be a carefully ordered insectoid militia set to overthrow society, but it’s a transmission which transcends anything Teeth Of The Sea have thus far offered in their time on Earth.

Step inside Hive, if you dare.

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Photo credit: Al Overdrive

Electro-Industrial music producer Miss FD has just released her latest electrifying single, ‘Distractions’. The track showcases a combination of dark, pulsating instrumentals, and sinister female vocals.

‘Distractions’ envelops listeners in a dystopian realm, where glitchy electronic textures intertwine with gritty industrial elements to create an immersive cyber industrial undercurrent. The turbulent fusion of atmospheric soundscapes, aggressive beats, and haunting melodies sets the stage for lyrics inviting listeners to question and reflect on the constant bombardment of distractions thrown at us, keeping us from truly grasping the rapidly evolving events taking place in the world around us.

‘Distractions’ is out now through Quantum Release Records, available worldwide on all major streaming outlets.

Listen here:

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Miss FD is an underground dark electronic music artist, singer, songwriter, producer, and performer. The project began in 2009 and has since captivated audiences from the dark music world with a unique combination of haunting yet upbeat music, thoughtful lyrics, and mysterious and sensual vocals.

Miss FD released her debut single ‘Together Forever’ in 2009 to positive reception. This was swiftly followed-up in 2010 with her seminal debut album Monsters in the Industry. Her original style focused on electro-industrial, dark synthpop, and darkwave related genres. From 2010 to 2017, Miss FD went on to release a string of singles including ‘Love Magic’, Down in the Dungeon’, ‘Infatuated’, ‘Cry For You (Haunted)’, ‘Unraveling’, and ‘Electropop Sickle’. She also released two more albums, 2011’s Love Never Dies and 2013’s Comfort for the Desolate.

2018 saw Miss FD combine all her musical prowess over the years for her definitive industrial-rock album “Transcendence”. “Transcendence” also included a collaboration with Vulture Culture, whom she would further collaborate with on the singles ‘Ashes Of Stars’, ‘Spitfire’, and ‘Faster Than Light’.

Following her 2020 singles ‘Keep Going’ and ‘Pandemic 2020’, Miss FD released her three-song EP “Adore”, and the single ‘Your Core’, which were heavily infused with futuristic and cyberpunk elements. 2022 saw Miss FD exploring Göbekli Tepe in her three-song dark pop EP, “As Above, So Below”, followed by her cyberpunk single ‘Menticide’. 2023 brings the release of Miss FD’s latest cyber-industrial single ‘Distractions’.

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