We gave it a quick mention on the podcast, but we’d like to draw folks’ attention to the storm brewing down in Los Angeles. No, not the storm over [INSERT TOPICAL SPORTS REFERENCE #52], but concerning the just announced three day festival that’s being assembled to celebrate Das Bunker’s 20th anniversary in October. We’re not at liberty to disclose any of the line-up as of yet, but it includes a host of heavy hitters from Our Thing which speaks to the Bunker crew’s years in the game. Looks like Industrial Summer Camp’s gonna be running well into the fall this year: do you have the constitution for it, campers? Let’s give you some new tracks to get you in shape.
SPARK! Eveyone knows a clown packs!
SPARK!, “Zombie”
We’ll cop to being lukewarm on SwEBM act SPARK!’s last full length LP. That may be partially attributable to the departure of Stefan Brorsson, leaving Mattias Ziessow to complete an album with an array of other singers. It was Biomekkanik’s Christer Hermodsson who stood out from the pack of guest vocalists, and it was shortly announced shortly thereafter that he would be the new permanent voice of SPARK!. New single “Zombie” is promising enough: Hermodsson’s voice is a nice compliment to Ziessow’s 16th note basslines and punky kick-snare patterns. It’ll be interesting to see how it works across an entire record.
Blush Response, “Body Artifex”
Joey Blush’s breakout year continues with Body Architect, his new one for [aufnahme + wiedergabe]. Some of you may recall his last one for the ahead-of-the-curve Belin label was more on the techno-industrial style. This one feels like it’s splitting the difference between that sound and Reshaper, the really good rhythmic noise LP he just put out for Ant-Zen. Strong, deeply designed work as always, it’s another winner from a producer on a roll that shows no sign of slowing down.
Disharmony, “Memorized Skin”
Few bands kick between IDM, classic electro-industrial, and ambient as confidently as Slovakia’s Disharmony. It’s been three years since their last LP, and now here they are moving into the post-Tympanik (R.I.P.) phase of their career with this taster EP. The tension between that which is crystal clear and that which is scarred and occluded has always made Disharmony worthy of attention, and this new piece is no exception.
Eschaton, “Answer My Prayer”
We’ve been idly referring to 2016 as the year of techno-industrial, and there’s been plenty of good releases to support that assertion so far. How about a collab from two separate acts that each can lay claim to cred in that equation? Orphx are no strangers to industrial and techno audiences both; the long-running Hamiltonian duo have a scrolls-deep discography that caters to a wide swathe of electronic music appreciators. Ancient Methods seem to have emerged into the broader consciousness over the last 18 months, buoyed by cosigns from acts as diverse as The Soft Moon and Theologian. This is actually the second 12″ this team-up has produced, but the timing couldn’t feel more right for another dose of clinically-controlled beats and surgical grade programming.
Dissociate, “GUH!”
Snappy bleeps and squelches coming by way of Minneapolis’ Dissociate. Though the project’s been kicking around for a donkey’s age, we’ll cop to being unfamiliar. That said, the skronky electro bounce on display on new LP parse/process is immediately welcoming. Should appeal to folks who dig on Kill Memory Crash, We Have A Ghost, and Big Black Delta.
Plazas, “2 Leave U Behind”
Lastly, some dark and nifty bedroom synthpop from our own backyard. We actually just caught the one-woman act for the first time last night, though Plazas have been gigging about town for a year or so. Soft and clearly delivered with just the right amount of shadow and restraint, second EP Empathy‘s just been released digitally and on tape.
Rather concerned that Spark video is pushing Our Thing closer to the Juggalo thing. 😉
So here’s my question about this whole “2016 as the year of techno-industrial” thing: What IS the legacy of the mid-2000s “Techno Body Music” (TBM) movement? It just occurred to me how weird it is that our scene is getting so excited about all the new Techno/EBM crossover music, when less than a decade ago it felt like so many of us were roundly denouncing a subgenre that was basically doing just that. From Metropolis’ promo blurb for the Combichrist “Get Your Body Beat” EP (2006): “An all out invasion is immanent and Combichrist will hail the coming of a new age in electronic music…Techno Body Music (TBM).” In 2005 there was even a compilation called “This Is… Techno Body Music Vol. 1” (https://www.discogs.com/Various-This-Is-Techno-Body-Music-Vol-1/release/533127), which now seems like an odd mixture of artists who could still be mentioned in a discussion of modern techno-industrial, and some who would likely be considered irrelevant to it.
Vice ran an article earlier this year titled “There Is No “Revival”, Industrial Techno Has Always Been Banging Party Music” (https://thump.vice.com/en_ca/article/joe-muggs-industrial-techno), but it contains zero mention of the mid-late 2000s TBM. As far as I know, nobody really considers that Combichrist/Modulate/Soman/SAM/Reaper/etc. era to have any relation to the roots of 2016’s techno-industrial, and I get the impression of that era of TBM being distinctly unfashionable within Our Thing’s clubs now… but for how long? Are we going to get a warm critical reappraisal of Everybody Hates You sooner rather than later?
I wouldn’t want to speak for Alex, but I’d hazard to say that a lot of that stuff didn’t really register with dedicated techno fans as being influenced by the sorts of sounds or artists they’d traditionally associate with their genre, much in the same way that plenty of folks who’d been fans of industrial through the 80s and 90s felt as though very little they heard in the clubs from futurepop onwards was connected to the things that brought them into the fold.
That comp’s an interesting one, though, and points to a nice intersection of industrial and electro which was happening at the time: Heckmann, Raumschmiere, The Hacker, and Fixmer were all able to play both sides of the fence and had fans on both. Hell, Alex used to play Vitalic all the time in the club we were DJing at in the mid oughts.
That stuff’s all a very different side of techno’s influence than the much darker one which has held sway in pure underground techno circles (not that I’m an expert on that by any means) and certainly since the way things have been shook up since the reaction to bass music. I’d say that the stuff now being released by Perc Trax and Hospital, or often getting spun at the Boiler Room is being celebrated because it’s pointing to darker territory which has long laid fallow on our side of the tracks; it’s not hard to hear similarities with Dive or Muslimgauze and it seems that folks who identify as fans or techno -or- industrial (but not necessarily both) are getting their backs scratched by such stuff right now. The Vice article’s interesting, but seems to have been written nigh exclusively from the techno side of things, with a pretty generous application of industrial as an adjective. While the author may be right about this sound’s roots in techno being older than we’d think, I think you’d have had a hard time getting any of the tracks they’re talking about over in an industrial club at the time of their release, or at least as tough a time as Reaper would have had at the parties they’re talking about.
I for one welcome our new Juggalo overlords to Our Thing. I’d like to remind them as a trusted internet commentator I can be helpful in rounding up other rivetheads to toil in their underground meth caves.
Going to the Gathering ironically: Not Even Once.
Damn, that Eschaton track is good. Checking them out.