Ah friends, after all the excitement of the last few weekends it’s been a genuine pleasure to kick back, crack a few delicious craft brews and vegetate for a weekend. Sure, the life of an international industrial music blogger is exciting and filled with mystery and adventure, but sometimes it’s those pleasant evenings spent alphabetizing and rebagging all your vinyls, only to have the shelf give way (as you’re placing a copy of the New Beat r/Evolution compilation onto it) that are most memorable. Did I say memorable? Because what I meant to say was brain-hemorrhage-inducing. Still, the summer is the best time to listen to records, and having more time to do that is never unwelcome. Let’s peruse a few new songs together and start figuring out what we’re excited for in the back half of the year of our lord 2013.

Surgyn, “Feed Me Fame”
You know what I dig about Surgyn? It’s that they have a really well developed sense of style and delivery that applies across their look, their music and their public personas. So few acts in this scene know how to develop a package of those elements effectively, a problem these young Scots body musicians clearly don’t have. This new single reminds me a lot of that “Money, Success, Fame, Glamour” joint from Party Monster, which seems appropriate; toss in vanity and aesthetics and you’d have a salad of Surgyn’s pet themes, all delivered with just enough cheek to make it work without crossing over into parody or the cartoonishly obvious.

Gheists, “Unja Stair”
Sumfin’ a lil’ different from Mangadrive studios. Where that project has gone full bore into face-melting psy-trance, this side-project is almost entirely the opposite: all downtempo, meditative and spooky. I think it’d slot in nicely with plenty of the post-witchhouse stuff in terms of mood and BPM, but there’s also hints of some 90’s trip hop in there, and maybe even some dub if you wanna squint. LP gets loosed on July 15th, with remixes from Corvx de Timor and V▲LH▲LL!

THYX, “Ships to War”
Do you get the impression that now that Stefan Poiss has an established outlet for music outside of mind.in.a.box he’s just going berzerk with song and album drops? Two records in two years, and a steady stream of singles like this one, another collab with Machinima artist Ray Kofoed. I never played no EVE Online, but from what I understand it’s a game of epic space battles (as evidenced in this video) so a proggy jam with orchestral flourishes certainly seems appropriate. Quite a ways from the Cyberpunk 2020 vibe of much of Stefan’s work, but we’ve been known to enjoy some space operatics in our day (it may or may not surprise you to find out that we are enormous fucking nerds).

Front Line Assembly, “Ghosts”
Okay, so let’s say you weren’t feeling the EDM-stylee on the other pre-release single for FLA’s Echogenetic. Give this a whirl, why not! FLA has an underrated history of solid slow jams and the production on this one is mega-deep without being cluttered: listen to it nice and loud to hear some interesting touches. Album is out this week and I gotta say I’m curious to hear how the current Front Line-up integrates all the stylistic hints and whispers we’ve been hearing into a cohesive whole. Stay tuned, true believers!

Kontravoid, “Impurities”
Did you check out Kontravoid’s self-titled LP from last year? I liked it a lot. Somewhere between the electro-punk of Crystal Castles (for whom Kontravoid mastermind Cameron Findlay used to drum) and all that new body the kids are in a tizzy over, it had some really solid tunes coupled with a nice less-is-more production aesthetic. This song comes from a split 7″ they just released with nu-italo combo Brusque Twins on Visage Musique; you should give that a spin if you’re looking for something spooky and fun to offset the summer hear.