Posts Tagged ‘electronica’

The iconic Jah Wobble has teamed up with guitarist Jon Klein on Automated Paradise, their third collaborative album and debut album as a duo with Dimple Discs. Out March 27th, this eight-track collection is previewed by the invigorating lead track ‘Fading Away’, a track that pulsates with motorik drive and the raw electrical tension of British post-punk and new wave, its shimmering progressive layers seemingly surging through the circuits of life itself.

The pairing of post-punk legends Jah Wobble (Public Image Ltd.) and Jon Klein (Specimen, Siouxsie & The Banshees) is no coincidence. Initially combining forces on the Metal Box – Rebuilt In Dub album, released in 2021, they continue to collaborate – both live and creating music in the studio.

“Jah Wobble and I share a mutual desire to keep a momentum going at the centre of the creative process. So we keeping it moving and trust our instinctive decisions and ideas. Automated Paradise is essentially a collection of jams and sketches, all made very spontaneously. We’d made several albums together previously, starting with 2021’s Metal Box – Rebuilt in Dub, so he had a wide range of experiences and strategies to draw from,” says Jon Klein.

“‘Fading Away’ is an end-of-civilisation story, echoing one of the earliest themes of human literature and reflecting a persistent human anxiety about the fragility of social order.”

Jah Wobble adds, “Making this record with Jon Klein was (as ever) an absolute buzz . Totally in the moment. Proper post punk. Angry and humorous. ‘Fading Away’ was the first track we finished from this album. We did this record in a handful of very intense, spontaneous sessions. Right place, right time sort of thing”.

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This album follows two 2025 albums for Wobble -  Dub Volume 1 (Dimple Discs) and the expanded reissue of the 2017 album The Usual Suspects, featuring 25 career highlights, re-recorded and including some of Wobble’s finest material, alongside tracks by Invaders Of The Heart and PiL.

This is Jah Wobble’s first post-punk album in recent years, following an array of travel and dub records. The brash guitar-driven tracks reflect his continuing preoccupation with the declining state of the nation. Driven by his experience working weekly at a music-based community project in Merton, along with Jon Klein, this record recalls the spirit of Mark Stewart – angry in an empathetic, constructive way. Like much of his recent work, the lyrical content was often inspired while traversing London’s transport system.

Jon Klein is a guitarist and producer best known as a member of Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1987 until 1994, which saw the release of the albums Peepshow, Superstition and The Rapture. Originally in the Bristol band Europeans, he then formed the glam-goth act Specimen and relocated to London, where he co-founded The Batcave nightclub. He has worked with Talvin Singh and Sinéad O’Connor, and co-produced a string of No. 1 albums for Warner-signed Spanish band Fangoria, fueling a decade-long streak of chart-topping success in Spain. His most recent work being as co-producer and guitarist with Jah Wobble.

Jah Wobble (born John Wardle) is a bass guitarist and vocalist from East London, whose career encapsulated genres from post-punk, dub and world music to experimental rock and electronic music. An original member of Public Image Ltd (PiL) from 1978-80, he made two groundbreaking albums with the band, which included the iconic Metal Box.

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Hunter As a Horse (HAAH) is the South African musician and vocalist Mia van Wyk. Based in the Western Cape, she has spent the last few years self-releasing a diverse series of singles and EPs that combine electronically-focused songs with intense, melancholic lyrics that are given a darkly cinematic production.

Having recently signed to Metropolis Records, the first HAAH single for the label is ’Lighthouse’, an extremely personal song that weaves together mythology and psychology. Inspired by Carl Jung and ‘shadow work’, it is about how only the broken can truly understand each other. “But, one who was broken and is now healed has greater power to lead the broken through the dark night of the soul because they know the territory,” explains van Wyk. “It’s like if someone who died came back to guide the lost back home. I’m ignoring every warning about how you can’t save someone and declaring that I can. It’s about fearlessly challenging somebody else’s demons.”

Seamlessly genre-hopping between alternative, indie, electronic and dream-pop, with diversions into alternative dance and even nu-goth, the songs of HAAH have been described as mysterious, apocalyptic soundtracks for the strange happenings of our time, with the UK newspaper The Guardian commenting: “Brings to mind the mesmerising atmospherics of Lamb and Zero 7. Dark and very lovely indeed.”

The song lyrics of van Wyk are a mystical ride through her strange and synchronicitous life. Deeply authentic, they are inspired by death, addiction, astral visions, CPTSD, melancholia, nostalgia and magical thinking.

Hear ‘Lighthouse’ here:

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HUNTER AS A HORSE | Mia van Wyk

Transatlantic project, DEATH BY LOVE has just unveiled ‘Sellenno’ – the new single & video from the forthcoming album, 444 due out on February 20th.
’Sellenno’ is not merely a song. It is an act of confrontation.

Written during autumn, a season of decay and withdrawal, the song emerged as an attempt to give form to pain that had long remained unnamed. As the external world faded into rust and cold, the song became a vessel for what could no longer stay buried: the psychological residue of childhood trauma and the emotional numbness shaped by C-PTSD.

At its core, ‘Sellenno’ explores dissociation: the state in which feeling becomes dangerous, and pain paradoxically turns into the only proof of being alive.

‘Sellenno’ stands as a portrait of survival rather than catharsis. It does not offer healing as spectacle, but as possibility, Speaking openly about trauma becomes, in itself, an act of resistance against silence. For a long time, the past remained locked away. With ‘Sellenno’ , that silence is broken.

The music video for ‘Sellenno’ was filmed on location at the historic Heinz Ketchup Factory in Pittsburgh, USA. Its vast, abandoned interiors – cold, dark, and cavernous provide an ideal visual counterpoint to the song’s emotional core, amplifying themes of dissociation, withdrawal, and inner desolation.

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DEATH BY LOVE weaves gothic, industrial, and trip-hop sensibilities into a singular sonic language, enriched by evocative Middle Eastern vocal textures. The project brings together Peter Guellard—whose decades-long presence in the U.S. dark-electronic underground includes work with The Electric Hellfire Club, Closterkeller, and Blitzkrieg—and Inga Habiba, whose distinctive, spiritually charged voice has been shaped by a multicultural heritage and a long career fronting gothic and new-wave acts in Poland.

A genuinely transatlantic duo, DEATH BY LOVE creates across continents through digital collaboration and embraces a multimedia approach to performance—pushing the concept of live presentation to its limits, even incorporating holographic presence on stage.

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MESH unveil the stylish music video ‘Exile’ as the first new song from the UK alternative electronic duo since nine years! This single is an edit of the opening track of the English band’s forthcoming new album The Truth Doesn’t Matter, which has been scheduled for release on March 27, 2026.

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MESH comment on ‘Exile’: “I was trying to write some music that was uplifting but had a dark and moody undertone”, Richard explains. “I had the chord structure and the chorus, but felt something was missing. That’s when I added the arpeggio type line at the start. This changed the character of the song and gave it that hypnotic, driving feel. It is the glue that holds it all together. After we had finished mixing the album and almost a year after the music was written, Mark sent me the track with the vocals added. It was one of those moments when I knew immediately that this track had to be the single. It was as quick as that.”

“We were about to go to Germany to mix the album with Olaf!, Mark adds. "I still had a couple of instrumentals from Rich which had no lyrics or vocals. I loaded one into Cubasis on my phone and started working on it in dead time during the mixing. I needed inspiration, and Judit, the wife of our producer Olaf, gave me the only English books that she had: Chicken Soup for the Soul – Stories for a Better World by various authors, and ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’, which is a Bowie biography. I was also reading Heinlein’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ on my pad. The lyrics kind of just fell out of those influences. I recorded the vocals on the phone outside on Olaf’s balcony and recorded them properly when I got home. It was all very last minute, but worth that last push.”

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Mortality Tables – 5th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Mortality Tables’ Impermanence Project has grown legs over the course of the last year, and has offered some remarkable, striking, and intensely personal responses to the theme. And as the title of this latest addition to the expanding body of work emerging under the project’s auspices alludes, Gareth Jones’ 53_StOlaves : Response is a response to a response, so to speak, adding layers of interpretation but also a certain kind of dialogue to the project.

The original St Olaves (St Olaves : Catharsis) was recorded label owner and project curator Mat Smith and released in June, and stands as one of the most intense and deeply personal pieces, a churning whorl of noise distilled from a field recording made by Smith at St. Olave’s, Hart Street, London. Amidst it, there are footsteps, voices, all vague and barely audible in the overwhelming wall of sound. The accompanying notes relate, ‘For a brief moment, you settled into silence. I said that I loved you again. It seemed to sink in who I was and why I was calling. It would be the last time that I truly connected with you, and I am convinced that despite the blur of the drugs and your Alzheimer’s that you understood.

‘The moment lasted barely a couple of seconds during our nine-minute call, but it felt like an eternity. You began saying that you were about to be taken away for tests, but you didn’t know what the tests were. Except they weren’t tests: you were being taken to theatre.

‘Two hours and five minutes after our call, at 1405, you passed away during surgery.’

It hits hard.

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And so we arrive at 53_StOlaves : Response, a field recording made by Jones while on holiday in Greece. He writes, ‘I was moved to create a response to St. Olave’s in the spirit of impermanence understood as, viewed through the lens of, transformation.’

53_StOlaves : Response is a similar duration – meaning it contains just over nine minutes of buzzing, jarring waves of background noise. It glitches frequently, the volume suddenly surging unexpectedly after an ebb, tapering to an elongated organ-like drone before altogether more optimistic-sounding ripples emerge. It has a wistfulness, a certain air of melancholy, but over time, this too dissipates, leaving gentle, dappled ambient hues with understated beats fluttering to the fade.

If St Olaves : Catharsis is the soundtrack to raw anguish and the howl of loss, the staggering bewilderment at the fragility and brevity of life, 53_StOlaves : Response feels like the emergence of acceptance over the passage of time. And this is where Response really comes to add to the theme of impermanence, and it feels like a subtle reassurance that while we likely never necessarily ‘recover’ from those deepest losses, that the wounds will forever remain psychological scars, the pain does ease, eventually, through, as Jones puts it, ‘transformation’. Nothing lasts forever. We transition. We transform. 

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r-ecords – 19th December 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

A crackle of static washes in and obfuscates the murky bass and beats which begin to emerge. It’s a strange experience, like listening to a tune while under water. Over time, this shifts: hypnotic beats with clicking, cracking snares and low, thwocking bass drum sounds cut through the curtain of hiss which hangs like heavy rain. And so it is that ‘Waiting for nothing’, the first of the three compositions on R. Schappert’s Hellherz EP. It’s an intriguing piece, layered and unpredictable and multi-faceted.

In context of his bio, which informs us that ‘Roland Schappert pursues border crossings in the form of an “organic digitality” oscillating between melos, sound and rhythm’.

The EP’s accompanying notes are somewhat winding, kind of cryptic: ‘Where do we put all the words that held us captive? We put them in a bottle post and send them out into the open sea. Back on land, there is fluttering in the space of spaces. Corners and edges crumble away in tumultuous layers. Let us take the time that the melos urges us to take, let us entrust him with our voice.

Sensually coded sequences of notes disrupt the free flow of our thoughts. Cranes hop and counter common notions of progress. Hopping instead of marching. Jumping instead of stomping. Up into the sky. From 3/4 to 4/4 time and back again. With hissing and quiet humming. Do we like it better up here? Where do we come from, where are we flying to for the winter? No more getting lost: Wrap your words. Our hearts are light.’

It appears that much of this is cultivated around the EP’s centrepiece, ‘Wrap your words’, the credits for which draw my attention in a way which imbues me with a certain unease:

Lyrics by R. Schappert

Vocals: revised AI voice

AI’s ubiquity is cause for concern in itself, and the reasons for this are a thesis in themselves. But specifically, given the way AI trains itself, voluntarily feeding it words to recycle and regurgitate feels like an abandonment of artistic ownership. When William Burrroughs cut up existing texts in order to form new ones, he questioned the notion that anyone ‘owned’ words, contending that the act of writing was simply the selection and manipulation of words in differing sequences. But this is not the same challenge of ownership and methods of creativity, because the application of AI serves to remove the artist from the process, partially or even wholly. Moreover, while AI is being used for military and medical purposes (and fears over where that may lead again are another thesis worth of debate at least), in the day-to-day, AI for the everyman seems to be about creative applications. Personally, I would rather AI did my admin and cleaned the oven in order to give me more time for creative pursuits. The idea that an artist would delegate any part of their creative work to AI is something which I find truly bewildering. Yes, there are skills we may lack, but the joy of art, in any medium – is learning those skills, or collaborating with other creatives to fill those skills gaps. There are real people with real skills, and working with them and learning from them is how we grow as artists.

So, AI voice? Why? Why not find a vocalist? Why not even apply autotune to a real vocal if that’s the desired effect? The warbling, autotuned-sounding digital vocalisations sound pretty naff, if truth be told, and add little to a tune which clops and thuds along with some retro synth sounds hovering vaguely around a beat which stutters along in soft focus. But as I listen, the whole AI vocal thing gnaws at me: has AI been utilised, uncredited, to the instrumentation too? What can we trust, what can we believe now?

The title track draws the EP to a close, with some brooding, quavering organ sounds and glitchy beats and more static, returning things full-circle before an abrupt end. It’s atmospheric, and a shade unsettling, too.

It may be brief, but there are many layers to this. As a whole, Hellherz provides much to ponder.

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(Click image to link to audio)

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Infacted Recordings – 2nd January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Where were you when…? That’s the question that is so often asked when it comes to moments in history. Whether it’s the assassination of John Lennon or JFK, or 9/11 (I was at work on the third floor of an office in Glasgow, and as the news broke, it didn’t seem real. At some point, people may ask ‘where were you when America invaded Venezuela, abducted their president and declared that they would be running the country and taking their oil?’

Me, I was starting preparation for a pasta bake ahead of a visit from my elderly mother whose mental capacity is in severe mental decline, and my stepfather, whose mental capacity has been questionable for the thirty years I’ve known him, stressing over how much grief I would get over being vegetarian, yet again, or similar.

I found myself faced with the dilemma – did I actually want to write about music in the face of this? Was it even appropriate? The answer was that I needed to immerse myself in music, to take myself out this hellish unreality by retreating to someplace safe. Someplace safe, for me, is my office, with some candles, a large vodka, and the challenge of articulating the impact of new music in words.

Back in 1992, The Wedding Present undertook the task of releasing a single a month, on 7”, and each one hit the UK top 40, and scored the band a record number of chart singles in a year – beating Elvis Presley. A couple of years back, I covered the progress of Argonaut as they released a single a month to assemble their next album. Again, it was a great example of how deadlines and confines can push creative output, although I was rather glad I didn’t have to get busses into town after school and rush round the various record shops to source a copy of said monthly singles.

And now UK industrial/electronic artist j:dead are on a trip of twelve singles in twelve months, perversely starting in December, making this the second in the series.

For a moment, I shall step aside and share from the accompanying bio for expanded context:

‘Where opening single “Pressure” confronted the crushing weight of expectation, “Disgusting” turns the lens inward, addressing the uncomfortable realization of having slipped into complacency. Through candid, visceral lyrics, the track embodies the feeling of awakening to one’s own laziness, comfort, and decline; expressed symbolically through the erosion of physical appearance. It’s a raw, self-critical reflection delivered with the intensity that defines j:dead’s work.’

‘Disgusting’ is a slice of high-energy electronica with a gothy / industrial edge which hits hard. Pumping beats, processed vocals and buoyant dance derivative synths dominate this single release which has alternative clubnight rager written all over it. And it’s the perfect escape.

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Christopher Nosnibor

The debut single from Nottingham band KEE. is a rare beast – it does something different. Sure, they’re an electro act who’ve been described as ‘Portishead on steroids’, but there’s a whole lot going on here. Yes, there’s a noirish aspect to the sound, and a haunting female vocal which has undeniable shades of Beth Gibbons about it. It’s also muted, low key, with something of a vintage analogue feel. But then there’s some twanging guitar soaked in reverb and it’s more desert rock than country, and suddenly, as if from nowhere, an urgent drum ‘n’ bass beat pumps in, jittery, frantic, like a fibrillating heart, an anxiety attack arising inexplicably in a moment of tranquillity.

The accompanying video – shot in part artful black and white, naturally, the rest blurry – captures and enhances the tense, dark atmosphere.

The groove builds as the track progresses, but so does the tension, and the abrupt finish seals it. It’s exciting, and promising, and I want more.

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KEE. Promo shot

Projekt Records – 1st December 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Having recently written on the retro qualities of Lowsunday’s latest release, the latest hot landing in my inbox is from another act which is preoccupied with a previous time – and who can blame them? I am painfully aware that old bastards like me constantly bemoan the shitness of the now while reminiscing about the golden era of our youth, and it’s no different from boomers still banging on about The Beatles and the music of the 60s and 70s as if time stopped when they hit thirty or whatever. There is a lot – a LOT – of exciting new music coming out right now, and much of it is pushing boundaries in unexpected directions. I for one will never cease to excited by this. But there is a significant amount of music emerging that draws its primary influences from the eighties and nineties, created by artists who simply cannot be drawn by nostalgia. Falling You are a perfect example.

Metanoia is pitched as being for ‘fans of 1980s 4AD dreampop (This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance), ‘90s shoegaze (Slowdive, Lush), or the darkwave / ethereal / ambient-electronic releases of the Projekt label (Love Spirals Downwards, Android Lust). It’s quite a span, but the fact is that this is a release with its inspirational roots well in the past. It pains me to be reminded that 1995 is thirty years ago when it feels like maybe a decade. The cover art of previous releases very much state shoegaze / dreampop, and while this album accompanied by altogether moodier artwork, which may in part serve to reflect the album’s title, it’s nevertheless hazy and evocative at the same time. ‘Hazy and evocative’ would be a fair summary of the album itself, too, and the dreamy / shoegaze elements are countered by some really quite unsettling spells of rather murkier ambience.

It starts strong with the bold swell of steel-stung acoustic guitar and a strong vocal – I’m not talking about a Florene Welch lung-busting bellow, but a controlled and balanced performance that really carries some resonance, and it’s mastered clear and loud… and then things swerve into a more electronic, almost dancy territory. Immediately it’s clear that this is going to be less an album and more a journey, and ‘Demiurge (Momento Eorum)’ immediately affirms this with its spiritual incantations and sonorous, droning rumblings.

‘Alcyone’ is the first of the album’s ten-minute epics, and it uses the time well: that is to say, with shuffling drums, spacious synths and layers of lilting vocals, it’s very much distilled from the essence of The Cocteau Twins, and slowly unfurls with an ethereal grace. A delicately-spun pop song at heart, the extended end section tapers down to a softly droning organ.

While the atmosphere is very much downbeat, downtempo, understated, one thing which is notable is the album’s range: ‘Ari’s Song’ is built around a soft-edged cyclical bass motif, around which piano and synths swirl, mist-like, the drums way in the distance, and even as a disturbance grows toward the end, it’s so far-away sounding, and the song itself, beyond that ever-present bass, barely there, and the same is true of the dank, dark ambient echoes of ‘Inside the Whale’. If ‘Ariadne’ is another shimmering indie tune hazed with fractal electronic ripples, the second ten-minute epic, ‘They Give Me Flowers’ provides a suitable companion piece to ‘Alcyone’, swerving from a brooding country and folk-tinged song with hints of All About Eve, and the album’s final track, ‘Philomena’ effectively completes the triptych, pulsing along gently and dreamily before slowly tapering away to nothingness. It’s a fitting conclusion to an album which at times is so vaporous and vague, it’s barely there – which is precisely the design. But in between the hazy drifts and particle-like waftings, there are some beautifully atmospheric and utterly captivating songs with strong leanings towards the dreamy pop side of indie. In terms of achieving an artistic objective, Falling You have absolutely nailed it with Metanoia.

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Beak> have remixed ‘Bus Stop’ by Litronix and today share a video, directed by Alex Terrazas and filmed on the sunny streets of East LA by Ské üblé.

Litronix comments, “Earth is a bus stop.  The… ‘in between’… another destination. Some of us wait patiently.  Some of us miss the bus.  We’re only here for a short period of time.  But why?  What is the reason?   Think deep, ruminating on this question, and you won’t be late for your bus.”

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Artwork Credit : Alex Terrazas