Morning, gang. We’ve precious little time to devote to extra-curricular musical activities, between trying to keep tabs on things happening within Our Thing (which we of course do only and all for you, dear reader) and keeping some semblance of lives outside of this here journamawhatsit, but it can be a refreshing and palate cleansing experience to clamber outside of one’s comfort zone. Checking out Providence’s The Body over the weekend was an ideal case in point. Yeah sure, they’ve collaborated with Haxan Cloak on their newest LP, but The Body are still a sludge/doom metal band at their core, and their show and audience at The Astoria on Saturday night reflected that. Local deathcrust bands opened, cans of Old Style flowed, and The Body blew out the room’s fuses half a dozen times before their bowel-churning set lumbered to a close. Industrial and its related genres are always going to be our jam, but the odd away game’s a great way to keep one’s senses and critical faculties limber. Having said that, let’s get back to our wheelhouse with six new tunes.

If this patch doesn't discourage bus talkers I have no idea what will.

Multiple Man, “Persuasion”
One of the most interesting and yet overlooked 80s trends within our thing was the integration of electro funk rhythms into darker leaning synth music. Although you wouldn’t have any trouble finding examples in the Numan catalogue, everyone from Cabaret Voltaire to The Severed Heads dabbled in some more groovy sounds commensurate with body music moving towards the broader dancefloor. The latest group to pick up that thread is Australia’s Multiple Man, who like White Car and Valis before them are mining the digital synthesizer gold mine for music that speaks boogie as fluently as it does EBM. Check out this cut “Persuasion” (with an appropriate throwback video) from the forthcoming 12″ maxisingle of the same name.

Comaduster, “Car Crash Live at the Sea”
A little something new from Comaduster, pulled from the upcoming Emerging Organisms vol. 5 compilation on Tympanik. Many a song produced by Réal Cardinal is predicated on this sort of deep bass and ever shifting atmospheres, but this is a particularly good example of why Comaduster’s music should be listened to reasonably loud: you can’t really experience the strangely physical nature of the project’s tracks until you feel those kicks hit you square in the chest. Masterful push pull from one of the best producers in the game right now.

Soothsayer, “Ineffable Glyph”
We’ve enjoyed Robert Rentip’s recent beat-focused work on Crime League, and Dan Handrabur’s collaborations with Phil Western under various guises are a local favourite. This new collaborative EP strikes a fun balance between trippy, percussive programming and woozy downtempo passages. The lineage of Soothsayer can be traced through Bucharest, Prague, Vancouver, and Toronto, yet it feels immediate and present. Fun stuff.

Koma Noir, “September (Beyond The Windscreen)”
Can’t say that we know too much about this brand spankin’ new Russian outfit. They cleave to a black metal ethos when it comes to self-applying monikers (Underground Dweller, Insomniac), but their new single’s a heady mix of classic darkwave and some of the newer giallo-inflected spooky stuff that’s been cropping up. The programming’s a bit rough around the edges, but this dub version of the single’s definitely promising.

Bossa Luce, “Pruning Diversion”
Shrouded weirdness from Italy. Bossa Luce’s full-length debut hearkens back to the most experimental sides of early 80s minimal wave and EBM (think the SNX comp), and it sounds as though label Direct Cut’s doing the sort of mimeograph/die-cut vinyl releases which perfectly match such work.

Gnome, Spybey & Displacer, “Untitled”
The collaboration between Dead Voices On Air’s Mark Spybey and Tony D’Oporto, aka Gnome, has been a mainstay of Toronto’s Crime League records since its inception. Only natural then that the masters of highly textural ambient and IDM would seek to collaborate with label boss Michael Morton, aka Displacer. As subtle and emotive as you might expect from this collaboration, this is some real devil-in-the-details production, where to larger shape of the track contains a variety of geographical details for you to explore. Good headphone listen from some artists who excel in that arena.