Hey friends! Hope you had a good weekend and were alble to spend 24/2, aka the International day of EBM, with friends and family. If you’re like us, you celebrated your faith in the traditional fashion: by drinking a pot of coffee (and later a couple of beers) while blasting Front By Front at call-the-front-desk volume while watching Youtube videos of Dolph Lundgren working out. Beats the hell out of carols and disgusting eggnog cocktails if you ask us. In Jean-Luc’s name, forever and ever, amen.
Ganser prove it's not just us Vancouverites who have reps as flower-eaters.
EkoBrottsMyndigheten, “I Grevens tid (SPELA BODY!)”
Speaking of 24/2, it’s always a happy occasion when the senior staff gets a missive from Swedish duo EkoBrottsMyndigheten, the band so dedicated to EBM they put it in their band name. If you’re familiar with them, you know exactly what to expect from this new song: stripped down catchy body music with a little punk flare and some wry Sverige humour to boot. Did we mention the song is exactly 2:42 long? Bless those guys.
Ganser, “Psy Ops”
It’s not every day that the New York Times beats us to the punch, but the lead tune from Chicago post-punk assault unit Ganser’s forthcoming record got some shine from the Gray Lady of all things. And why not? “Psy Ops” is a furiously tight and manic number; the musical equivalent of picking at a scab that just won’t go away over and over and over again. Throw in a video which instantaneously cinches the intolerable nature of the quotidian and we’re very excited to find out what first LP Odd Talk has in store after a string of excellent EPs.
Wire Spine, “Suburban Reality”
We’re incredibly excited by the announcement that Wire Spine’s debut LP Bury Me Here will be released in a little under a month. We’ve been privileged to watch the duo develop as a live entity since almost the beginning of their career, and over countless shows in Vancouver and elsewhere we’ve become pretty familiar with their catalogue of infectious, angular darkwave songs. The prospect of getting to hear those songs recorded for the first time is huge, and should be an eye-opener for those who have been sleeping on one of Our Thing’s best new bands.
Analfabetism, “Grisflöjten”
The Kalpamantra label’s always been synonymous with dark ambient in our experience, so the inclusion of one of our favourite death industrial acts, Fredrik Djurfeldt’s Analfabetism, on a forthcoming compilation was a bit of a surprise. But hey, it looks as though The Portrait Of Mortality is also going to feature work from the likes of Gnawed, The Vomit Arsonist, and Shock Frontier, so this trek into the noisier and more grinding side of things is obviously a conscious one. As with much of Analfabetism’s recent work, the mixture of low-frequency, almost incidental sounding loops and more insistent blasts and textures speaks to how Djurfeldt’s work can simultaneously sound lulling and aggressive.
NOUSIA, “Black Cube”
From Venezuela comes Nousia, an electro project which cleaves towards the dark side of things (without being dark electro – you know what we mean). The one-man outfit’s new EP is full of low-pitched, knee-twisting, squelch-heavy tunes which ride low-BPM tempos for all they’re worth and put them away wet. We’re thinking that some of these bass sounds would come across fantastic on a proper club system.
INVA//ID, “Worm”
Ripping new track from Los Angeles’ underground electro-industrial wunderkind INVA//ID. If y’all didn’t check out the band’s debut release from back in January, you should make a point of that. The mix of raw vocals, pumping sequences and tense, nervy energy impressed us a great deal. You can even hear a bit of evolution in presentation on “Worm”, which comes to us courtesy of a compilation from Seattle-based Vertex, also featuring cuts from like-minded DIY industrialists Chrome Corpse and Mind Teardown.
