Well, with July well underway and Festival Season in full swing, it’s traditionally the time we here at the HQ start thinking about what our eventual year end list might look like. Sure, there’s still months and months before we can start the process of compiling EoY honours, but it pays to take a step back at mid-year and see what we’ve seen thus far and take stock of what we know is coming. That’s a cue for our friendly readers as well: if there’s a record we haven’t yet covered from 2019 you think is relavent to our coverage, or a forthcoming LP we should know about hit us up here in the comments or via e-mail. We appreciate it!

Wingtips, lookin’ the part

Rotersand, “I Feel You Don’t”
Rotersand’s new single “You Know Nothing” is an odd mish-mash of military horns and social media invective. To be honest, we’re much more taken with the B-side. “I Feel You Don’t” is an interesting mix of the high-gloss but always warm brand of futurepop the German duo have always worked with and a slightly punchier techno streak. We’re not yet sure if either track’ll be appearing on a follow-up to 2016’s Capitalism TM, but the sheer difference in styles between the A and B sides could be interesting played out across a full LP.

Wingtips, “Deaf Pursuit”
More freshness from Chicago, one of the North American meccas for Our Thing, it’s darkwave duo Wingtips. We’re really digging the blend of old-school chiming guitar and semi-anguished vocals and more contemporary electronics on this one, keeping it accessible to non-genre folks and deep scene heads alike. Not wonder this act was tapped for this year’s Cold Waves. Debut album Exposure Therapy drops on Artoffact soonish, stand-by for our take.

Mind Teardown, “Shockmaster”
You remember a few years back when singular post-industrial psychdeliac Domagoj Krsic of How Green is My Toupee (ex-Cyborgs on Crack) did a more straight up but still off-kilter electro-industrial kinda record as Mind Teardown? We do. Anyways, Krsic has resurrected the project but with an entirely new remit, producing a whole LP of low-key, shoegazey darkwave and neo-folk. While slightly more straightforward then we’ve come to expect from the Croation producer, it still bears the marks of his production style and his unique sensibility. Could “Shockmaster” be a touching tribute to Fred Ott? We’d like to think so.

Hyperlacrimae, “Nasotti’s White Charme”
We’re not quite sure what to make of the first previews of the debut proper of Naples’ Hyperlacrimae. A collaboration between producers Erminio Granata and Carmine Laurenza, it looks to be deconstructing techno down to slower and more spread out spaces, with some odd overlap with classic rhythmic noise and even symphonic darkwave emerging. Their full-length debut will be out on Infidel Bodies shortly and should give us an interesting object lesson in reaching beyond the borders of dark techno.

Pact Infernal, “Itzrel Itrzrel Azazel”
What to make of an act like Pact Infernal? From a genre standpoint you could place them in the company of dark ambient, death industrial, or industrial-techno crossover. None of those necessarily fit the act’s newest EP The Gehenna Odyssey, which fuses thudding rhythmics with scraping, bleak soundscapes. It’s music infused with both energy and foreboding, you could dance to it but god knows you’d constantly be waiting for somebody to slip through the crowd and knife you while you were. Tip of the hat to pal Avi Roig for the tip on this one!

000, “Lonely Flower Metal”
Via RND.R (who’ve brought us recent rhythmic released by Divider, Unconscious, and Paul Mork), here’s an EP of dark techno body music from German producer Enrico Sedda, aka 000. While We Became Reptiles‘ first two tracks have the sort of booming, 110 BPM austerity we’ve come to expect nowadays, “Lonely Flower Metal” spins its EBM influences in a much more funky and acid-touched way, and makes things extra interesting with some outside-the-box murky guitar. May appeal to folks who enjoyed last year’s excellent Fractions EP.