We’re still chewing our way through the veritable boatload of bookmarks, promos, and Bandcamp wishlist additions that piled up during our summer hiatus, which is both good and bad; good because it makes writing these Tracks posts a breeze, bad because this looks like its going to be a late breaking year in terms of the pure volume of new tunes under our purview and we don’t know when (if ever we’ll catch up). Of course that just means its time to buckle down and write some more, as with this week’s Tracks post.
Madeline Goldstein. Photo by @chakravorty
Madeline Goldstein, “1996 Expectations”
Los Angeles’ Madeline Goldstein had a sleeper EP last year with Other World, a collection of darkwavey electro numbers that showed off some keen songwriting instincts and the chanteuses’, smokey, fully formed persona. The recently released “1996 Experience” picks up where the preceding songs left off, showing a year’s worth of development in pretty much all respects and whetting our appetite for more from this up and comer.
Cardinal Noire, “Killshelter”
We’ve been fans of Finnish electro-industrialists Cardinal Noire for a few years now, the duo having won our hearts early on by describing their sound as “Vancouver School”. Still, we weren’t expecting to hear that they had signed to Artoffact, or for their new single “Killshelter” to be such a huge leap forwards. Like their previous songs, you can hear the ur-influence of Skinny Puppy clear as day, but with an added complexity and emotion that puts us in mind of acts like Interlace who took the sound to still more mind-bending and philosophical places.
R010R, “Silent Prisoner”
If you’ve hung around some of the same digital corners of the industrial world as we have for as long as we have, you’ll know that Michael Renfield is a head’s head with a deep understanding of the genre’s mores. It’s nice, then, to see him winding up his on-again, off-again project R010R over the last year or two. Pieces like this from R010R’s new EP speak to Renfield’s sense of the noisier extremes and the more sculpted subtleties of classic dark electro.
Tassel, “X.”
We’ve been reeeal into Arizona industrial act Tassel lately, their two 2023 EPs having earned plenty of repeated spins thanks to their rough-edged but still very danceable mixture of electronic sounds. Consequently we’re pretty hyped to hear their LP A Sacrifice: Unto Idols when it releases in a few weeks, especially when it’s heralded by songs like “X.” which works a nasty groove for everything its worth, never relenting, never losing its grip on the listener.
Witch Eyes, “Pathways”
Whether it’s dark ambient or technoid, we’ve come to associate immaculately shaped and seriously evocative releases from Errorgrid. That’s definitely the case with the new to us Witch Eyes’ new single, which links deep space atmospherics with a seriously addictive, slinky lope of programming. Despite its minimalism and short run time, a whole lot of cyberpunk, IDM-esque movement and imagery is conjured in this track.
VIRE, “Modern Haves”
It’s been a good long while since we heard anything from VIRE, the project of Toronto’s Philip Wilson, but this new single functions as a solid reintroduction to Wilson’s style of programming, while also showing off some of the grainier textures which may have worked their way into his aesthetic in the interim. An immediate and almost bright slice of downtempo with some slight whiffs of post-rock and some witch house-tinged beats, this should definitely appeal to those jonesing for new Stendeck.
