Hope your weekend was at least half as fun as ours, folks! Between nabbing some tasty burritos, reupping growlers at Brassneck (points for their new brett saison) for podcast fuel, and watching classic Ric Flair promos, we indulged in one of our all-time fave hobbies: crate digging at record shops. Bruce nabbed a tasty Christof Glowalla reissue, Kate Bush cassingle (truly one of the shortest-lived formats ever), and an original pressing of the Pink Dots’ Maria Dimension. For his part, Alex bought the new bootleg reissues of Scatology and Love’s Secret Domain, which prompted some podcast discussion of the ethics of boots in a case like Coil’s, in which the artists are dead and the originals fetch unearthly resale prices. You’ll have to wait for Friday for the full podcast experience, but in the meantime check these six new tunes!
Fully crate-digging all the time. Unnu look ya now.
Controlled Collapse, “Dzień Sądu (Volt 9000 Remix)”
Polish electro-industrial act Controlled Collapse make some wickedly syncopated tracks, machine grooves that rely heavily on the interplay of bass and drums to achieve max-funk. Pretty cool that on their latest remix EP Ruins After Babel (available as a download and on a limited cassette via Bandcamp) they tapped the similarly bouncy but far different Volt 9000 to bring some of their rubbery weirdness to bear on “Dzień Sądu”. We love some cross-continental collaboration, especially between acts that have similar pedigrees but distinct sounds, y’all should snag the EP for some contributions from Die Braut and A7ie as well.
Attrition, “Acid Tongue (BBCom’s Minimal Mix)”
Long lost Attrition DAT tapes unearthed and farmed out for remixing! The resultant three-track by-donation digital single does a nice job of showing how timeless and malleable Martin Bowes’ pensive darkwave style can be. Always danceable but always holding something back in the shadows, there’s a reason Attrition have been in the game as long as they have.
Foxxy Newport, “BlVCKLODGE”
If the upbeat electro-goth-pop stylee of this track from San Francisco vocalist/MC FoxxyNewport sounds familiar, it might be because the track was produced by Mr.Kitty, one of our current favourites at the HQ. Lotsa bounce here, and we definitely dig on the Dracula’s Disco vibes you get from them organ sounds. Timely name as well, what with largely unfounded rumours flying about the possibility of new Twin Peaks. Go snag it (and “Emotions”, also produced by MK) on Bandcamp.
Blac Kolor, “Banging”
If our previous discussions of Blac Kolor didn’t tip you off, we could have very easily included Hendrick Grothe’s forthcoming LP for Basic Unit in our 2014 wishlist. After the release of pre-album single “Kold“, we now have a second track from Wide Noise as it goes up for preorder. Dense and stuttering the whole way through, it’s very different from the sparse but hazy beats we’ve heard from Grothe thus far, but is further whetting our appetites for a full techno-industrial tour-de-force.
Body of Light, “Is It Lost”
Is there anything more weirdly unnerving in this age of digital distribution than actual scarcity? This amazing new Body of Light track was released as part of art/music collective Ascetic House’s January Program, wherein a new tape is released each day of the month, and is available for ONE day only. In other words, if you missed it, it’s gone, and no word when you’ll be able to get it again, if ever. You gotta hope that Body of Light will include this number on some forthcoming release since this is likely the best thing we’ve heard from Arizona’s Jarson brothers: hella grandiose darkwave straight from the heart of Reverb County. We’ll be keeping our ears to the ground and moment we hear about a way to purchase this, you’ll be the first to know.
No Spectrum, “Senators”
We like to talk up Vancouver’s musical pedigree past and present a lot, but we can also get a bit myopic and overlook business taking place elsewhere in British Columbia. Putting us in our place is the Dark Light Noise Fest happening in Kamloops on February 14th and 15th. While there are a fair number of bands from Van making the trek to the interior for the weekend, there are also plenty of local acts repping the interior, like Kamloops’ No Spectrum, who offer up a Skullflower-ish wall of psych feedback here.
