Welcome to the last Tracks post of 2017, folks! We’ve served up no less than 270 different tunes and mixes by acts familiar and new in an attempt to keep people appraised of what’s happening in dark music in this most chaotic and unsettling of years. Some of these have been previews of records we’ve hotly been anticipating, others have been attempts to recognize acts just making their first moves, and still more have been tips of the hat to acts just outside of our usual territory but who we felt were of relevance to fans of Our Thing. We hope you’ve found some new favourites through this weekly update, and if not, well, there’s still this one last batch to go!
Ecstasphere. Photo by Clemens Richardson.
Gasoline Invertebrate, “Age Out (feat. Keef Baker)”
Gasoline Invertebrate is new project from The Gothsicles’ Brian Graupner, and from our first impressions of his debut release Freak Drive it seems like a continuation of some of the ideas and themes he was experimenting with on the last G’sicles LP. First listen turns up some different vocal deliveries including aggrotech style processing and trad vocoder action, a few nods to big club millennial club sounds, and some traces of trad EBM. We’re quite taken with this affecting collaboration with Keef Baker (who put out a very good record with Phil from Be My Enemy/Cubanate this year) that uses electric bass in a most unexpected but welcome fashion.
Ecstasphere, “Distance”
Some smooth and polished rhythmic noise comes to us by way of Germany. Transgressions: Documenting Decay is the third LP from one-woman act Ecstasphere, although we have to admit we weren’t hitherto familiar with said discography. The first pieces from Transgressions portend good things, though, with an interesting mix of ambient and metal elements being woven into a solid rhythmic foundation. A mastering job from Arco Trauma is as good an omen as any for a release in the glossier end of noise.
Desert Monolith, “Tähtitaivas (Single Version)”
Strong single from friend of the site and regular on the Telekon Slack channel Valtteri Hyvärinen with his recently redubbed Desert Monolith project (formerly Desert M). Like much of his previous material, the focus is on establishing a strong groove before slowly expanding the song’s melody into wider, lusher vistas, with lots of delicate sequences and interesting sound design choices. Peep the single on Bandcamp for some excellent remixes from Null Device, Cryounit, Dub Jay, Dharmata 101 and more!
S S S S, “Anonymous Materials”
Post-industrial noise takes on booming, echoing gravitas in the hands of Switzerland’s Samuel Savenberg and his S S S S project. While his earlier EP from this year on aufnahme + weidergabe was square in that label’s triangulation of the techno-industrial nexus, his new EP for new label Edipo Re slows things down a bit. Alternately scraping and abyssal, this should equally appeal to fans of Lustmord and Blac Kolor.
Rome, “Blighter”
Jerome Reuter won’t quit, and won’t slow down. His torrent of output would be remarkable enough on its own, it’s only when you take into account how fully realized his work is conceptually that you start to realize what a special artist he is. In this briefest of moments before the release of his next full-length Hall of Thatch we get “Blighter”, released as a 7″ taster of the album. We trust very few artists as much as we trust Jerome to do something meaningful every time they step up to the plate, so the heavy, lurching feeling we get from this neo-folk number seems appropriate: this is weighty music from an artist of substance.
Prurient, “Walking On Dehydrated Coral”
Well, that looks like it’s pretty much a wrap for Tracks posts in 2017, so it’s time to start working on Year End coverage and…wait, what? Dom Fernow just released a three hour Prurient record which is earning lots of advance praise and is supposed to carry forward the experimentation of Frozen Niagra Falls into new directions? *sigh* Okay, look people: we’re just two guys. There’s only so much we can get to in one calendar year. We’ll likely have something to say about Rainbow Mirror in the new year, but for now take this shuddering procession of pings and distortion as an acknowledgement of receipt.
