At any other time hearing that The Gothsicles, Rexx Arkana and Cenotype did a Bronski Beat cover would fill me with glee, but not today: this weekend came and went, and for the first time ever the senior staff weren’t at Festival Kinetik in Montreal, missing the aforementioned drunken version of “Hit That Perfect Beat” amongst other Boreal assisted lunacy. I cannot stress to you enough the mental distress this caused, more than once I caught myself wistfully staring east, ears straining with the vague hope of catching a few notes of distant synth music. Alas, a combination of differing travel plans and other intensely boring real life factors conspired to keep us away this year, but considering the funk we now find ourselves in I daresay we shan’t be missing it again next year. As I often do in times of adversity, I turn to music to soothe me. Here’s some new songs, and we’ll see you next year in la belle ville!
Surgyn, “The Stranger (∆AIMON remix)
Well, this is unexpected. Not that we doubted for even a moment that our beloved ∆AIMON were capable of taking on a track by Scotland’s premiere EBM party boys Surgyn, but that the results would sound so natural on top of being so dark and enormous. Word has it that receiving this mix prompted Death Watch Asia to launch their flexidisk product line, which you can incidentally order over at Bandcamp, and get Surgyn’s 15 track remix release Restitched to boot.
Volt 9000, “Toybox”
Toronto’s Volt 9000 have their third album in as many years ready to drop in June. If you don’t know the project, they take the ohGr template for weird, rubbery industrial and graft it to various strains chiptune, usually with pretty great results. Conopoly is their first album for Artoffact, and although the comparisons to the sounds of the new Skinny Puppy are probably inevitable, we’re hoping the easy association might get more people to check out this young Canadian project. They’re worth the effort.
Bruderschaft, “Falling”
Rexx Arkana of FGFC820’s ultimate futurepop supergroup Bruderschaft never followed up their massive 2-CD single “Forever” from 2003 with another release, although a few tracks have surfaced here and there (one featuring Assemblage 23’s Tom Shear and the other System Syn’s Clint Carney if memory serves) since. Imagine my surprise when this new track featuring Daniel Myer on the mic popped up a few weeks back, accompanied by the announcement that a new EP would be finished shortly. No word on who’s involved this time out (alumni include Sebastian Komor, Ronan Harris, Joakim Montelius and Stefan Groth) but if we know Rexx it’ll be some A-list talent for certain. More on this as it develops!
Download, “Yoni”
With all the hype surrounding the imminent release of the new Skinny Puppy record (which rest assured we will be talking about at length in a couple days), I don’t know how many folks have twigged that Cevin Key and Phil Western’s long-running Download project has an album set to go in a few weeks. There isn’t a Download record I don’t like, from their distinctly post-industrial origins to their current mode as…whatever the hell they are now. Some kind of analogue-synth-driven IDM monster truck that jumps over genre classifications effortlessly is about as close as I can come to describing them. Burn one down and throw this new jam “Yoni” on if you’re so inclined, it’s got a pleasantly breezy pace for something so busy.
Imperative Reaction, “Siphon (Continues remix)”
A new remix EP from Ted Phelps and company surfaced last week featuring some demos and a few remixes by Alter Der Ruine, Blaqk Audio and this lovely little rework by Dan Gatto’s synthpop project Continues. It’s available in the ever popular pay-what-you-want model, which is always appreciated. In fact this is almost an ideal example of how that can work in a band’s favour, I might not have dropped $12 for this release in a physical format, but am happy to throw IR a few bucks for the whole digital shebang.
