Only a scant two weeks or so ’til we hit Calgary for Terminus Festival for the what is for us the kick-off of festival season. It used to be that things got kicked off way earlier, but with the shift towards holding massive industrial and related music festivals in the fall, we’re not sure if the venerable “Industrial Summer Camp” tag still applies. Still, with Cold Waves holding an event on each coast, Das Bunker holding it down in the hotbed of North American industrial, and a few more events we’re expecting to hear announcements from soon, we’d have to be looking pretty hard for a reason to complain. Let’s check in on a new Tracks post while we desperately try to figure out how to budget for all this goodness.
If Laslo Antal's making a Heidegger crack with his new Diesein project, we're too dumb to get it.
Diesein, “You”
You may recall from our review of the last Sixth June LP Virgo Rising that we were very taken by the buttery smooth saxophone used by the Berlin darkwave project. Well, buckle up because Laslo Antal’s new thing Diesein is here and it has sax all over it, acting as a complement to a funky bassline that actually puts us in mind of some mid-80s Chicago industrial sounds. Laslo specifically invokes Miami Vice in his description of that track which is fine by us; as pillaged as the neon 1980s aesthetic has become, we’re always in the mood for hot-nights driving darkness.
Voice Of Saturn, “Ionoco”
As much as we’ve come to rely on DKA Records for our regular doses of pure, sweaty body music and the most gauzy and gothic of minimal wave, label guy James Andrew Ford and company have their busy fingers on the pulses of countless sounds. Witness the hybrid of pure analog psych-outs and early acid on the debut tape from Travis Thatcher’s Voice Of Saturn project. Alternately utterly dreamy and firmly punchy, it’s a nice triangulation of the more outre zones classic synth heads tend to roam between.
The Tear Garden, “Forbidden Zone”
Okay, yeah: things have been pretty Tear Garden heavy around here what with the release of The Brown Acid Caveat. But that new LP isn’t the only communique coming from the distant quadrant of the galaxy cEvin, Edward, and the rest of the gang like to lamp around in. Eye Spy Vol. 2‘s just been released on Sub-Con and Metro, and like its predecessor digs deep into the archives to unearth hitherto unheard cosmic gems. Check this number straight from the Tired Eyes Slowly Burning sessions (previously heard on several Ka-Spel solo releases), now a full three decades old.
DRIFT., “Genderland”
Dub has been a part of the makeup of post-punk and darkwave since those genres were incepted, but it’s not often that the influence is writ large across them these days. Enter London’s DRIFT. (aka Nathalia Bruno), whose new track “Genderland” goes deep into dub rhythmics and structures in the context of a very rich and sonorous darkwave jam. Could be that it’s summer, could be that we’re excited that people are finally pushing past some of the stylistic barriers that have plagued throwback dark music, but whatever the reason we’re feeling this pretty hard.
Tyler Newman, “structure two [vancouver grey]”
Folks might recall that we were really taken with the recent foray Tyler Newman (Battery Cage/Informatik) made into post-metal with his negative_crush project. The harmonic ambiance which lay underneath that record’s sludgy guitars was a big part of its appeal, and Newman’s new aerial structures EP is composed almost wholly of similarly atmospheric pads and synths. And hey, you can take our word for it when we say that Newman’s cinched the je ne sais quois of Vancouver’s cinereal skies.
JT Whitfield, “Justified Craving (Violet Poison remix)”
Not even gonna front like we can keep up with Clan Destine, the post-industrial tape label who seemingly never stop or slow down their release schedule of industrial, darkwave, dungeon synth, techno and various combinations of those sounds. We do like to check in occasionally though, and when we do it’s gratifying to discover stuff that fits right in with our tastes over here at the old ID:UD HQ. Take for example this bodied up remix of Austin’s JT Whitfield, all ugly muscle and lo-fi grit, just the solution if you need to add some gristle back to your diet.
