So, there’s seemingly credible reasons to believe that Twitter might not be usable much longer, either because it will literally fail at a technical level or be overrun by fascists, bots and spam. If that’s the case we’ll miss it as a dumping ground for our industrial dad jokes, but won’t be going anywhere; you’ll still be able to find us here, on Facebook and on Instagram, not to mention our Slack channel (which you can join by dropping us a message with “Telekon” in the subject line). It’s weird to consider that we may potentially see the death of a major social media platform within the site’s lifetime, or what it may be replaced with. Certainly not us, we just post Tracks. Speaking of which…
Bara Hari
Maelstrom & Lousiahhh, “If I Could”
Did you listen to our interview with Louisahhh back in the summer? If so, you would have heard the Paris based producer and performer talk about the forthcoming work with friend Maelstrom, the other half of her RAAR label which has been going for a few years now. If you were into last year’s excellent The Price of Freedom, good news; this has the same grittiness and magnetism of that material, with an extra layer of synth grit for extra chewiness. Play it loud, play it hard.
Neu-Romancer, “Neue Romantika”
The crossover between italo and Our Thing continues apace, this time with some decidedly darkwave flair on the debut release from Berlin by way of Australia producer Laura Bailey. Immediate and hooky but holding the sort of lush depth we want from darkwave, this title cut bodes very well for the forthcoming EP due in January. Check out the super dreamy remix by fellow Oz expat Zanias while you’re at it.
genCAB, “Soft”
2022 was a big comeback year for David Dutton, aka genCAB; he released his first new LP in more than a decade Thoughts Beyond Words and has been on a massive tour with Aesthetic Perfection and Josie Pace, both of which have showcased his combination of production heavy industrial sounds, and his songwriting and lyricism. New EP Everything You See is Mine drives those qualities home even further, with tracks like “Soft” showing that his aggression and arrangement chops – check the way the track does double-time breakdowns, layers its vocals and executes turn on a dime shifts between sections for maximum impact. Impressive stuff that certainly adds to Dutton’s resume as we approach year end.
Sleep Clinic / Sombre Lux, “Iena Dubuk”
The pitch for Opposing Forces, the new EP on high-def dark electronics label Errorgrid, is an intriguing one: six one-off collaborations between label-affiliated artists with notably different styles. Check out the grand but also deeply grimy IDM architecture of this meet-up of downtempo producer Sombre Lux and site faves Sleep Clinic.
Pitch After Dark, “Scourge Of The Tower”
Some fun tradgoth workouts come to us from Las Vegas’ Pitch After Dark, who formed in the early days of lockdown. While those tunes’ gloom came from a sense of longing for absent nightlife, it’s nice to hear them stepping the energy up a bit here. Their third EP also comes bundled with its two predecessors, so you can get entirely caught up with Dark & Severe.
Bara Hari, “Tempest”
Los Angeles songstress Bara Hari returns with “Tempest”, a nice uptempo slice of american darkwave with the same sensibility that impressed us on her previous releases. Perhaps more than the titular stormy directing of the lyrics, it’s the amount of personality that Bara Hari injects into her work that grabs our attention most; without abandoning accessibility Sam Franco shows us an aspect of her artistic persona we had yet to experience and which gives the track some extra intrigue.
