Risen like the dude from Altered Beast, we’re back from that unplanned hiatus and revved up for reals. How was your weekend? That’s cool, ours was pretty rad also. You ever been to Pride in Vancouver? We take that shit serious here, especially in ID:UD’s hood, where the parties run late, loud and lusty and the beer is icy cold. After 3-days o’ gay it’s nice to just kick back, maybe sip on a sweaty glass of spirits and write about some new songs that have come to our attention. Thanks for your patience, we promise gold for the rest of the month!
Oh, I didn't see you there Icon of Coil! So nice of you to drop by!
Icon of Coil, “PerfectSex”
Chances are that if you follow our thing in any capacity you will have already heard the first single from the reunited Icon of Coil. After all, Andy, Seb and Christian are responsible for some of the best and most enduring records of the futurepop era and the news of any new music from the trio is bound to spread like butter on your breakfast toast. So how do they sound after 8 years of not releasing records? Kinda odd, really. I really dig the verse, which has a nice grinding rhythm part but the chorus seems a touch understated when it should soar, and LaPlegua’s vocal delivery is on the disinterested side. Still, this thing is gonna sound monstrous on a big system, and traditionally IoC never release the best songs as the first album single. I’m still hyped to hear new music from these guys as a unit. “PerfectSex” is available now as a pay-what-you-want download from Bandcamp.
Familjen, “Pantamera (Dr4GG3d Int0 The FoR3st by V▲LH▲LL)”
In case you missed it, I wrote last week about how the debut release by V▲LH▲LL (a split with M‡яcΔllΔ) is the new standard for post-witch house musics. That means you can look forward to a lot of fawning chitter chatter from us in the months to come about every tidbit they release, as is our wont. I can’t say I’m familiar with the original version of this here walk through a haunted forest, but a cursory search would seem to suggest Familjen are a Swedish electropop group, so I can only assume the ultra-mysterious V▲LH▲LL are having a bit of fun outside their usual wheelhouse. More like this please!
Marc Heal, “The Compound Eye (Rough Mix)”
The prospect of new music from Marc Heal (Cubanate/C-Tec) is an exciting one, especially where he’s purportedly working with ol’ Ray Watts on it. The first couple of examples weren’t kick your door down great, but I am straight rockin’ out to this number, which has that classic Cubanate programming and guitar chug I didn’t realize how much I missed ’til I heard it resurrected here. I wanna hear this cleaned up, mastered and released ASAP. And hey, get JLD on the horn while you’re at it – if we’re bringing back the best of the 90s let’s not do it halfway, yeah?
Cute Heels, “Metal Disco V”
Hot on the (cute) heels of his remix for Haujobb, the hustles from Brussels has got tracks up from his forthcoming EP Future Facts. We love us some acid scarred EBM and this fits that bill and then some, all lurching vocoder and reverbed out cowbell, all the music that plays at the robot factory after hours when the ‘bots are lettin’ it all hang out. This’ll be out in a few weeks on Black Leather Records, you need this hot stuff, hot stuff.
LabXIV, “Mirrors”
LabXIV are one of those delightful unknown quantities we come across every so often, a project that cares more about making tunes than writing up bios and hyping themselves up via Facebook and Twitter. That’s vaguely refreshing, and fits their sterile electropop vibe of their debut 12″ to the proverbial T, a collection of minimally constructed synth songs that fit well with their associates The Present Moment just so. Apparently they’ll be on TPM’s euro tourdates to promote the release of their debut 12″ on Coredark records, but you can peep the whole thing right now on Soundcloud if you’re so inclined. And hey, free download for a limited time, always a bonus for early adopters!
