Hola, gang! Summer’s in full swing, as is the crunch at my day job, but I’m just a couple of weeks away from a full month off, the majority of which I plan to spend at Nat Bailey Stadium, cheering for my beloved Vancouver Canadians (and the insidious Chef Wasabi). I’m managing to find fun in the interim, though, having caught Pacific Rim on the weekend with my folks. Truth be told, given Alex’s love for Neon Genesis Evengelion and vintage Godzilla of all stripes, I’m somewhat surprised that I got into the theatre to catch it before he did, but no matter: if you’re a fan of the kaiju or mech genres there’s lots of love and respect for those traditions shown, a full on clinic in how to shoot and convey the size of ginormous fighting creatures without destroying visual flow (not that Michael Bay is paying attention), and plenty of the gaudy colour and lushness we’ve come to expect and love from Del Toro. Fingers crossed for it doing gangbusters and for his perpetually-ankled HPL film to finally be greenlit. The weekend was also marked by yours truly catching on lots of listening, both ID:UD pertinent and otherwise, so let’s get to Monday’s tracks!

"Where's Ghidorah, String? WHERE'S GHIDORAH?!?"

Henric De La Cour, “Chasing Dark”
You don’t have to read ID:UD to know how much we dig HDLC (kind of looks like an obsolete peripheral cable when it’s written); “Harmony Dies”, “80s”, and of course “Dracula” have been staples at just about any club gigs we’ve had in the past year or two. Whether clubby or not, we were stoked to hear that a follow-up to his self titled debut is approaching release, again on Progress Productions, and again with a distinct black and white and red all-over aesthetic. There’s a slightly more trad post-punk stride to this number than we heard from Henric last time, though it fits in well with the turn he had with Agent Side Grinder. In any case, we’ll be waiting for Mandrills with bated breath and unflung feces.

Kevorkian Death Cycle, “Mind Decay”
There’s a far-too-stretched and not-worth-the-trip joke to be made about KDC reactivating just around the time that their namesake shuffled off this mortal coil, but that’d only demean the band as well as you and I, dear reader. In any case, yes, the classic electro-industrial troop are poised to drop their first LP in nearly fifteen years, and we’ve being treated to an advance taste, a mix of classic dark electro and coldwave with some slick and tasteful modern production.

Corvx De Timor, “Extinction Level Event”
It’s been cool to watch Ben Arp solidify the aesthetic of the latest incarnation of his solo work, and Corvx De Timor really seems to have come into its own. Here’s a new stand-alone cut: very minimal pads and taps plus some Space 1999 (man, mad geek points for a deep cut like that) samples pitched down give this a bit of a Remission-era Puppy feel. Gloomy but refreshing, somehow.

Otto Dix, “3RO”
I have to say that I was bowled over upon running down the list of artists appearing on Martin Bowes of Attrition’s new comp The Cage. While I knew Bowes did production as a day job, I’d no sense of the breadth and depth of artists who’d put in work with him at his studio over the past two decades. The forty track release is available by donation and you really owe it to yourself to kick some coin over for it. Where else are you going to find The Klinik, Edward Ka-Spel, and Soft Riot all in the same room? In any case, here’s a much more subtle mix Martin did for wacky cult Russian countertenor darkwave act Otto Dix.

∆AIMON, “Choke (C-Drone-Defect Mix)
I’ll let Al Pacino speak for me. I’ve literally lost count of the number of mixes of tracks from ∆AIMON’s Flatliner (our #1 album of 2012, if you’re just joining us) we’ve featured here, but of all folks C-Drone-Defect have crashed the party well after the cops have busted it up, with a grinding but slinky chop-up of “Choke”. I’ve always dug C-D-D’s super bombastic, almost operatic take on aggrotech; a quick perusal indicates that no, I haven’t been out of the loop, things have been quiet on their front for a while. Would definitely not mind an album in this vein, just saying…