Oh man, it’s so good to be home in Van City after a week of ridiculous good times in Montreal drinking tasty Dieu du Ciel, havin’ laughs with friends new and old, and watchin’ just a ruinous line-up of bands do their thing. You’ll be seeing some Kinetik coverage from us next week, but for now I have a huge stack of new records to listen to and a very irritated Intern Tobey to placate with belly-rubs. Here’s some cool new songs that have popped up in my feed over the last week, and remember (with apologies to Method Man); fuck an internet Rivet, they whine ’bout it on Side-Line, we live it!
XP8 feat. Surgyn, “EINS, ZWEI, DREI, FUCK”
To celebrate their 5000th Facebook follower our friends in XP8 have released this collab with Surgyn, a shot across the bow of the german Industrial/Rave crossover sound that’s been gaining ground over the last couple years. Now, regardless of how you feel about that stuff (I like [X]-Rx, sue me), it’s pretty telling that these guys can produce a parody track in the style that clearly stands head and shoulders above most (if not all) of the music it’s sending up from a production standpoint. Go download it free from the XP8 Soundcloud, and why not show them some FB love as well!
Die-6-, “Back.Te.Riality”
A tip of the ID:UD ballcap to Ol’ Claus Larsen for putting these guys on our radar. Ismael Martinez is apparently a DJ and scene figure of some years (per Discogs dude has done some remix work for players like Dive and Rabia Sorda), but otherwise he’s a bit of a cypher at least as far as production credits go. That said, I’m always in the mood for this sort of bubbly techno/electro /EBM flavour, especially when you get those little hints of Italo too. This one’ll likely appeal to fans of Gatekeeper; full length is available via iTunes and Beatport!
//TENSE//, “Crumbling (Demo)”
I’m honestly of two minds about hearing demos a lot of the time. On the one hand, it’s cool to hear the genesis of an album or song I already know and love, just so you can track all the changes between the original spark of inspiration and the finished product. On the other, when it’s during the process of recording an album I sometimes feel like the initial rush of hearing a whole new album is dampened when I’m already privy to how the sausages got made. I like the “demo for a day” idea, in which demos go up for a limited time, and serves both sides pretty well, but this is dragging on and I haven’t even said anything about this new demo from //TENSE//, Texas’ neo-oldschool synth/industrial duo. I want a new LP from them so bad I can taste it, so I’m happy to let this hold me down in the interim. Free download from Soundcloud, where you can hear all manner of cool tricks these kids have been up to.
Henric de la Cour, “Grenade”
This is the track Swedish alternative music icon Henric de la Cour released as a 7″ (b/w a cover of Venom’s “Harmony Dies”, I shit you not) for Record Store Day. Typical of HdlC’s heartfelt synth-ballad side, it’s got one of those huge sweeping choruses he can seemingly peel off at the drop of a hat. Enjoy the fantastic video, which handily uses beach volleyball as a metaphor for the agony and the ecstasy of romantic love, no kidding.
