So yeah, if you ever wanted an idea of what this website’s priorities are, look no further than our road trip this weekend. 14 hours in a minivan, all the way from ol’ Van City to Spokane, Washington. What band was worth that kind of investment of time, and the wear and tear on our friendship that comes with being stuck in a confined space with an unreliable navigation app calling the shots? No band at all it turns out: we went down to see some god damn Pro Wrestling! Getting to see luminaries like Shinsuke Nakamura, Finn Balor, and Bayley (our favourite) was pretty cool and well worth the drive, but as always we’re happy to get back to Canada and this here website and its weekly features, like this batch of tracks!
American Alpha are rad, trust us.
Weird Candle, “What Comes Next”
Being the dedicated trainspotters we are, a new song from Robert Katerwol and Caleb Blag is gonna grab our attention. We’ve been privileged enough to watch Vancouver’s Weird Candle evolve in real time. It’s been an interesting ride thus far, starting from spastic electro, through body music and synthpop and into the band’s sweaty, intense current hybrid mode. “What Comes Next” is plenty appropriate as song titles go: it’s a question central to our enjoyment of the band and one that drives their music forward at an astonishing pace.
Aliceffekt, “Senni Market”
Aliceffekt’s hermetic blend of chiptune and rhythmic noise has been left to steep and mutate in its own juices for so long that it’s become impossible to ferret out chains of influence or intention. Are we hitting fastforward on breakcore or just taking the Wayback Machine to a particularly humid day in IDM’s history? Like the best moments of Access To Arasaka, new EP Verreciel sounds nominally otherworldly, but conveys a sense of absolute comfort and familiarity with that other place.
Syrian, “Fire In Your Eyes (Mental Discipline remix)”
Italian synthpoppers Syrian surprised the hell out of us a few years ago with Death of a Sun, their wonderful retro italo inflected electropop record. They’ve been pretty quiet since (although we’ve been rocking “Ninja Warrior” consistently to keep them fresh in our mind) but apparently the band have been working on a new release for 2016. To help fund the recording they’ve done a digital remix/b-side/rarities release, featuring some nice reworks of the songs from Sun amongst others. Peep this futurepop remix of “Fire In Your Eyes” by Mental Discipline for example!
Hymnambulae, “Ett Ord Från Öknen”
2015 was a banner year for Pär Boström. The long-awaited follow-up to Kammarheit’s The Starwheel was finally unveiled, he unearthed six discs worth of archival Kammarheit material, and still found time to collaborate with Apocryphos and Atrium Carceri. The Swedish dark ambient savant’s not resting, though, and has just released an LP in collaboration with his sister Åsa Boström. Hymnambulae seems an earthier project than Kammarheit, reminding us perhaps of Piano Magic’s odd forays into drone, and merits further listening on our parts.
Black Needle Noise, “Behind The 4th Door”
DarkDriveClinic seems to be done with for the time being, but storied producer John Fryer’s still hard at work, having just turned out ten single tracks with a cast of guest vocalists in the past few months as Black Needle Noise. Not sure if these are going to be collated as an LP or are meant as a prelude to something else, but for now enjoy this wormy clockwork ride featuring none other than Kirlian Camera’s Elena Alice Fossi.
FATHER, “Lifeforce II”
Once in a great while something totally unexpected pops up in the ol’ Soundcloud feed and really grabs your ear. Take this track from London’s FATHER for example, a band who we knew nothing about, but who have like 20,000 likes on Facebook which is uh, a lot by the standards of the acts we cover. That aside, check this raunchy electro number, somewhere between gritty synthwave and the sweet audio fuckery HEALTH have been up to lately. Damn, man.
