Welcome to /Countdown/2024 – this year’s wrap-up of the best new music that I’ve heard across the year, and the 21st anniversary of me starting to do such annual roundups (which began on LiveJournal before moving to this site). I begin as usual, with the best compilations and reissues in no particular order, although it should be noted that as is the norm these days, there are a whole lot of reissues coming through.
/Playlists /Spotify / /YouTube
/Countdown/2024 /03-Dec/Comps & reissues /10-Dec/Tracks /17-Dec/Albums /24-Dec/Gigs
/2023 /2022 /2021 /2020 /2019 /2018
/2017 /2016 /2015 /2014 /2013 /2012/Not covered /2011
Other things to note: to allow me a Christmas break from writing, my “year” covers 01-Dec of the previous year to 30-Nov of this one, and I try my best to stick to that.
I run /amodelofcontrol.com as what might be called a “labour of love”. I’ve written about music for twenty-eight years, over twenty of those years under this website banner, and I continue to want to celebrate all that is great about this corner of the musical realm. So this site continues to exist – with no external funding and no paid-for advertising – and I will continue to do so as long as I want to do it, and as long as people want to read it.
So thanks for reading, contributing, offering comments, or being one of those people that makes the music I want to write about.
/Aesthetic Perfection
/A Violent Emotion (2024 Remaster)
/self-released
/Stream: Streaming Links
I think this is a first: a reissue and remaster of an album that has previously been /Album of the Year on this site. The second album from Daniel Graves was a revelation at the time: as he stepped out of the shadowy, distorted electronics that made up Close to Human, and revealed that a more upfront, poppier take on industrial suited him well. Some way from the aggrotech that was finally beginning to fade away in 2008, but this album had had a fistful of sharp edges and clenched in the other hand, some fantastic songs. The lascivious, punchy desire of The Siren remains the greatest song Graves ever wrote (and the changeup to falsetto for the chorus is a brilliant move), while the dancefloor-slaying power of Living The Wasted Life, The Great Depression and Pale is still undimmed.
But the really interesting thing, looking back, is how good the slower songs are here. A Quiet Anthem is full of omnious, dramatic piano, and seems to seethe in the background, while The Ones is a surprisingly upbeat song for one about your nighttime mind riddled with paranoia and nightmares. Krischan Wesenberg has done his usual excellent remastering job, not particularly changing much but giving it that bit more oomph, and bringing back what remains an outstanding album. My tastes and what Aesthetic Perfection these days calls “industrial pop” have somewhat diverged since, but this album is where he absolutely hit the spot for me.
/Brainiac
/Smack Bunny Baby (30th Anniversary)
/Craft Recordings
/Buy: Juno Records
The resurgence of interest in Brainiac recently – including their eventual (perhaps inevitable) reformation, has meant that there has been a steady stream of reissues (now, if only they could complete the set by a wider reissue of Bonsai Superstar…), and Smack Bunny Baby arrived on vinyl last December (pretty much as soon as my “new year” for releases begins). The first full-length Brainiac released, it was recorded when Michelle Modine was still in the band, and also before Tim Taylor and his bandmates got really weird. So for the most part, this is full-throttle art-punk, full of angular guitar and blasting tempos, but there are hints of what was to come. Like the bizarro lyrics of Martian Dance Invasion, the robot fetishism of I, Fuzzbot, the playground sneers of Cultural Zero… and then, there’s Draag. This is what Brainiac would become, as Taylor makes full use of his vocal treatments to sound almost entirely alien, and needless to say, it’s the best track here. An intriguing part of the Brainiac story, especially if you want to understand what they became.
/Front Line Assembly
/Millenium 2024
/Artoffact Records
/Buy: Bandcamp
The latest in a long line of FLA remasters and reissues – this one only on vinyl, and in a fetching coke bottle green – finally sees the mighty Millenium on vinyl again for the first time since it was originally released in 1994. This was a turning point for the band – the heavy use of guitars (by a then-barely-known Devin Townsend) opened up a whole new fanbase for them, and was at least partly influence by the band’s work with Fear Factory the previous year on the remix release Fear Is The Mindkiller (and would result in Rhys Fulber being pretty much a fifth member of FF for many years hence).
This is an outstanding remaster, too: never exactly a quiet album (it roars out of the traps with two of FLA’s greatest songs upfront – the Falling Down-sample-heavy Vigilante, and the long-time set closing title track), it has been remastered here so that everything in the mix – and there’s a lot going on – is absolutely crystal clear. The kick drums on Millenium really kick hard now, and Townsend’s riffs threaten to swallow you whole. As well as that, there are sampled Pantera, Sepultura and Metallica riffs, rappers (from P.O.W.E.R., on the stomping Victim of a Criminal), and frankly, thirty years on, it’s still bulletproof, and sounding better than ever.
/Laibach
/OPUS DEI (2024 Remaster)
/Mute
/Buy: MuteBank
The third Laibach album was their first with Mute (and in the US, on WaxTrax! Records), and while they’d become known in the UK thanks having spent time living in the country – after their effective dissident status in the then-Yugoslavia, using the Third Reich-era name for Slovene capital Ljubljana didn’t help – and having recorded a Peel Session, this was the point where the Laibach that is best-known first appeared.
To put it mildly, earlier Laibach material is experimental early industrial music, and with a few exceptions is about as inaccessible as they get. Quite what triggered the change I’ve never been sure, but clearly hearing popular music of the time flicked a switch, and they chose to cover some of those songs. Hence taking on Austrian band Opus‘ celebratory Live is Life, but here is turned into a stately – and atonal – martial stomp that twists the meaning somewhat: as if you are living purely to exist at the behest of your leaders.
The other band referenced in multiple ways here is Queen, who in the mid-80s were at the peak of their powers (in 1985, of course, they played for less than twenty minutes at Live Aid and stole the entire show, in front of a TV audience of hundreds of millions across the world). Other songs here use elements of Queen songs from A Kind of Magic, but Geburt Einer Nation must have been an almighty shock in 1987. All Laibach did – all! – was to add heavier drums, remove the guitars for synths, and then have Milan Fras sing the lyrics in German. And the result is a song that sounds like it is the soundtrack to a far-right rally (complete with a po-faced video that is clearly taking the piss), bringing the hitherto unthought nationalistic edge to the fore.
The rest of the album follows a similar pattern – the remaster sounds absolutely huge, perhaps the sound they were looking for all the long, and it will be interesting to hear the 2024 rework/re-recording that is due next week – and perhaps the album’s real importance is what came next. This martial style was used to reinterpret the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jesus Christ Superstar, an entire album of songs about war (the exceptional NATO), and much later, the notorious take on The Sound of Music that saw them play in North Korea. It opened them up to a vastly bigger and more receptive audience, even if too many missed the point of what Laibach were trying to say all the long: look and listen carefully, as the message you’re hearing might not be what you think it is. They’ve poked fun at right-wing Governments, they’ve questioned a host of national anthems and related nation-building: and to prove their point, effectively created their own virtual state (complete with passports) as part of a wider art movement and literally saved hundreds of lives in the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s by doing so. And then, just because they could, effortlessly released an industrial dancefloor anthem apparently because they felt like it, while slyly poking fun at European-American relations and tipping the hat at one of their influences.
Quite a legacy, really. There aren’t many bands that can truly say they’ve let the music do the talking, but Laibach continue to prefer it that way.
/Mark Lanegan
/Bubblegum XX
/Beggars Banquet
/Buy: Beggars Arkive
Mark Lanegan would have turned 60 in November, and to commemorate that milestone that he never reached, there was a star-studded tribute show in London this week. The tribulations of life meant that I had to miss out on that, but no matter, as I still have his music to enjoy.
In my younger years, I was very much more of a Screaming Trees fan, and while aware of his solo work, it took until the release of the sublime darkness of Bubblegum, his sixth solo album, before I really took note. He had PJ Harvey, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri, Greg Dulli, Dean Ween and Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin all involved across the album – some of those, of course, from artists where he’d contributed to their work.
All of the darkness in Lanegan’s life comes flooding out in this album – not for nothing is the cover almost entirely plain black – and when we read his autobiographies in later years, quite what he’d endured became clearer. A tough upbringing, drugs, alcohol, poverty, and the move into rock’n’roll, alongside more of all that had come before it, made Lanegan something of a survivor whose songs bore the scars of his life. Bubblegum, though, saw him using that history to create some of his finest songs.
Hit The City is a glorious duet with PJ Harvey that is almost celebratory in tone, and she returns later with the absolutely smouldering sensuality of Come to Me, but the highlight for me remains the bitter regret of Wedding Dress, where Lanegan atones for past mistakes – amazingly with his ex-wife Wendy Rae Fowler as the vocal foil for him, on a song that must at least in part be about her. There are punky, part-electronic songs too, but somehow everything hangs together on Lanegan’s distinctive voice.
There is a sublime beauty to this album, even twenty years on. Lanegan was a modern-day bluesman, who carried similar baggage and hurt to those who sang before him, but took his music to other places too, and is greatly missed.
/Mind.In.A.Box
/Lost Alone (Remaster)
/THYX Music
/Buy: Bandcamp
When this shadowy Austrian group first appeared, it was difficult to find out anything about them, and for some time at least, that appeared intentional. An intricate, elegant electronic album that used extensive vocal treatments (which made the few appearances of Stefan Poiss’s clean vocals all the more notable) to get across a striking sense of isolation and loneliness that permeates the entire album. As the phenomenal opening track Light & Dark makes clear, there’s two sides to every story, and as we begin to learn more about our at-this-point nameless narrator, he’s struggling to understand who he is, and what on earth is going on (something begins to be revealed in subsequent releases – currently the cyberpunk storyline has encompassed seven of the group’s albums).
The industrial and electronic scene is littered with artists who arrive, sounding like someone else – there are precious few that arrive apparently fully-formed, sounding like no-one else at all. But that’s what MIAB did, and continue to do – they even managed to completely reinvent themselves for live work some years later, and even in that form still sounded unique. Yes, there’s a couple of additional tracks, it’s been remastered, but it still sounds like the extraordinary album I loved in 2004. If, somehow, you’ve never heard this band before, start here and work forward. There’s a whole world to explore and get lost within, and it’s worth every moment of your time.
/Refused
/The Shape Of Punk To Come (25th Anniversary)
/Epitaph
/Buy: Refused Official Store
It took everyone a little while to catch up originally, but The Shape of Punk To Come is at last accepted as one of the greatest albums in hardcore – one that takes in jazz, electronics and political polemics and left-wing theory, but never loses sight of the musical core. Thus, we have the five minutes of moshpit detonation that is New Noise at the core – about making your own new art, rather than just relying on the work of the past – as well as the call to arms that are Liberation Frequency, Summer Holidays vs. Punk Routine, the stomping title track… there are even ballads here, but crucially, not a second is wasted on what would turn out to be the band’s final statement (at least until they unexpectedly reformed and continued in a slightly different direction).
This isn’t the first remaster and reissue of it, but seeing as it recently turned 25, and that the band are seemingly now winding down as health issues and age begin to bite, it is an entirely appropriate victory lap for an album that remains essentially flawless.
Accompanying this version is The Shape of Punk To Come: Obliterated. This sees an intriguing group of bands cover, remix or completely rework songs from the album. Some – Quicksand and Snapcase in particular – don’t deviate particularly, meaning their takes are great, but really works of reverence. Brutus tear down, rework and completely change The Deadly Rhythm – there’s bits I know, there’s a whole lot more I don’t – into their own image. New Noise gets two, short, takes. IDLES cut it up and rebuild it with an electronic base (starting with that breakdown at the heart of the song) that removes some of the tension. Ho99o9 turn it into a violent, nervous breakdown, while “black powerviolence” band ZULU add growling, edgy menace to a thrilling take of Protest Song ’68.
I’m not sure about Cold Cave turning Refused Are Fucking Dead into something of a moribund darkwave piece, as it robs the track of the jittering urgency that made it so exciting. Igorr shakes out the title track, while Cult of Luna turn Tannhäuser / Derivè into a brooding, ten-minute post-metal epic – and as per the inspirations for the song and the band/album (striving for ideals, thinking of new ways of doing the same things), sum up what is being done here neatly. Refused were never a band to stand still, and by having such a wide variety of artists reinterpreting their songs, have forged new ideas once again. The New Noise, if you will. Not all of it works, but that’s not the point. It’s the change that’s key.
We’ll likely never hear the likes of Refused again, and thus this is a fascinating, wide-reaching celebration of a band who were years ahead of their time.
/Spahn Ranch
/The Coiled One (Deluxe Reissue)
/Cleopatra Records
/Buy: Bandcamp
More than two decades since they disbanded, US industrialists Spahn Ranch have at last begun to get some of the retrospective respect they have long deserved. 2024 saw the reissue of the album, with additional, unheard remixes and a full remaster by Jürgen Engler of Die Krupps – a year short of its thirtieth birthday. It was a hell of a leap forward from the Collateral release, where the band were still trying to find their sound, and The Coiled One is the point where they nailed it. Full of punchy, interesting songs – right off the bat you get the processed guitars and looped power of Locusts that grabs you by the front from the opening seconds – it’s also very clear that the band were one that wanted to push the envelope and use as many of their influences as possible.
While later albums included covers – by The Equals and PJ Harvey, not exactly obvious touchpoints for an industrial band – here they take tentative steps tipping the hat to early electro (the retro-futurism of Infrastructure, and the whirling synths of Static Detonates the Gel) and also hints of a fascination with dub that are more fully explored on later albums. I can take or leave the remixes, that don’t really add much, but this remaster sounds brilliant, and if you’ve never heard Spahn Ranch before, this is an ideal introduction.
/Techno Animal
/Brotherhood of the Bomb (2023 Remaster)
/Relapse Records
/Buy: Bandcamp
The high water mark of the collaboration between Justin Broadrick (Godflesh) and Kevin Martin (The Bug) got a remaster this past year, and it helps to remind just how ferocious this album is. Bringing in a bunch of underground rap artists (notable names on the album include El-P and a early appearance of dälek, the latter on the rip-roaring closer Hell) was something of a masterstroke, as their urgent vocals help add a humanity to music that is unbelievably oppressive. Sure, neither Godflesh or The Bug could ever be described as easy to listen to, but this album is loud, has a booming low-end and is so, so heavy. The remaster has just made that all the more so: there is a glitchy, grimy nastiness to every track that in many ways only shows just how far ahead of its time this album was: it pre-dates by some years the rush of industrial-tinged, noisy alt.hip-hop that has followed since, and this was absolutely the precursor for.
/genCAB
/III I II (THIRD EYE GEMINI)
/Metropolis Records
/Buy: Bandcamp
I did wonder about where this should sit, but bearing in mind a good proportion of it is a complete reworking of old material from II transMuter, really, it should be in this week’s list.
David Dutton’s genCAB project first appeared on my radar nearly twenty years ago, the track DMT appearing on a Dark Sonus compilation. It was obvious back then that his emotionally-charged electro-industrial had a lot of potential, and the singles and album II transMuter that followed proved this. But there was this nagging feeling back then that Dutton wasn’t especially happy with it, and when the project was reactivated after a long absence in recent years, that was confirmed when he unveiled a staggeringly good new take on Perish The Thought. The core song and melody was left alone, it was the electronics and production that were entirely rebuilt, and it was so much better.
Perhaps as a result of the success of that, Dutton returned to much of the rest of his early material and reworked those as well, alongside a couple of new tracks too. Those new songs are great, but the reworks are really what I’m here for. Let It Be becomes Six Hits (Let It Be), with every element feeling like a giant leap forward, while that power-surge of a chorus – probably the best chorus anyone in the scene wrote around that time – left well alone.
One of the more radical changes comes to Self Image(s), where the perhaps flat mix of the original is untangled to unveil the melodic glory of the song below, concentrating much more on the vocals and perhaps dropping the tempo a touch too. Once again, it works, as does the banging dancefloor retooling that has become DMZ. The album closes where this rebirth began – with that outstanding, pulsing force of Perish The Thought.
Most reworkings of older material are simply attempts to regain public attention: this feels like a genuine labour of love from David Dutton, and the work put in here has paid off in spades.
/KITE
/VII
/Dais Records
/Buy: Bandcamp
KITE have long been spoken about in awed tones, particularly for their extraordinary, emotional liveshows, where their songs take on a whole new life. But as well as that, they’ve always eschewed the album release. Over the past fifteen years or so, they’ve released six EPs, and then a succession of 7″ singles, and VII is their first album, a compilation of those 7″ singles with some of the tracks in longer or revised versions. It is also a pretty great encapsulation of what KITE are about, too: skyscraping, dramatic and quasi-orchestral synthpop, that is full of life, love and wonder, without ever telling you too much.
This is a band who prefer to speak in metaphors, leaving their listeners to interpret the songs as they wish, and that’s fine by me. The crowning glory of this album for me is current live favourite Panic Music, a remarkable song that opens with stabs of synth not unlike an old Apop song, before exploding into an anthemic sunburst that makes me want it on repeat for the rest of the day. I’m beginning to get the feeling that KITE are finally gaining a much larger audience, and soon small venues won’t be able to contain them. It’s a leap they’ve long deserved.
/Pitchshifter
/Peel Sessions 1991-1993
/Cold Spring
/Buy: Bandcamp
I first got into Pitchshifter thanks to their 1993 Peel Session, so I was overjoyed to see this released at last (just in time for their latest tour). They recorded two Peel Sessions as a nascent band, back when they were still grindingly heavy, Godflesh-obsessed industrial metallers. The tracks from the first session come from the Submit mini-album that was to come in 1992, while the second session tracks are another Submit track reworked, and two of the tracks from Desensitized.
The early albums have long struggled to modern ears with a production that does their visceral power no favours, so to finally hear two of the best tracks from Desensitized again in full sonic force is quite something (other than Triad, this album has been ignored live since the 1990s). Particularly (A Higher Form Of) Killing, which is an early sign that PSI were moving away from their early influences. It’s a higher tempo track that bulldozes through your ears. But change was afoot, and Pitchshifter would quickly move on and leave this era behind.
/Pitchshifter
/[nos]Genius
/PSI Records
/Buy: Sold out
Back in October, I spoke online with JS Clayden about the November tour, but particularly about the evergreen Genius and the upcoming rework (which restored some of the original ideas that were cut before release in 1998). That release was available on Kickstarter but also on the tour, and I picked up my copy in London. For a song I’ve known by heart for 26 years, it is perhaps a bit jarring to hear the changes – particularly the re-added lyrics – but it’s the other tweaks that give it that bit more power. The remixes are fun, too, as Enter Shikari turn it into a monstrous, drum’n’bass rave-up, while Wargasm – who joined Pitchshifter onstage to do the song in London, and looked like they were having the time of their lives doing so – also supercharge the track with great results.
/Red Box
/Anthology 1980-1990
/Cherry Red Records
/Buy: Cherry Red
Red Box are best-known for their two big hits in the mid-80s (Lean on Me (Ah-Li-Ayo) went to Number Three in the UK, For America Number Ten, and both hit the upper reaches of the charts in Europe too), and have continued on an occasional basis since. But one missing element of their back-catalogue has been second album Motive, which has been out of print for as long as I can remember (and secondhand copies got very expensive indeed). So we can thank the band and their original label Cherry Red Records, who’ve teamed up for a CD box set that covers both of the first two albums (the aforementioned Motive, and the much-loved debut The Circle & The Square), as well as a bunch of 12 inches and alternative mixes, and most intriguingly, original demos from their really early days.
I could go on about the perfection of The Circle & The Square for hours – and have done in the past – so suffice to say that it’s still a perfect, world-travelling take on pop music that sounds like nothing else. Motive was released in 1990, and takes on a more electronic tone – and unlike TCTS, sounds very much a product of it’s time, even if the charging Train that opens the album is fantastic. But there is still a coherent theme, this time around movement and travel, and it’s a pleasant listen – although quite how they threw away the dramatic power of “Hello” He Lied as a B-side is a question we’ll perhaps never have answered. The disc of 12″ remixes is an intriguing time capsule: remixes at the time were often somewhat constrained by technology, and there’s a mix of dance mixes, stretched out versions, and a few takes that completely change the emphasis of the songs – as well as a jaunty take on Nina Simone’s Ain’t Got No/i Got Life tacked on the end.
Perhaps aside from Motive being available again, the fourth disc is the real attraction here. Simon Toulson-Clarke dug deep into his archive and unearthed a collection of demos from the period 1980-82, offering an insight into the origins of the band. They came from a punk/rock background, and the first track Age of Moods makes that absolutely obvious (indeed, as does the original 1983 single version of Chenko (Tenko-io) that’s on the first disc). Interestingly, only one song from these demos kept its title for the first album proper (Living In Domes), but that was almost entirely reworked aside from the lyrics and melody anyway, and listening to these songs, it is clear that the band struck out in a new direction once they worked out what they wanted to do.
The seeds of what was to come, though, are really found in final track Tonight (and, amazingly, the oldest of the tracks unearthed, according to the liner notes). Amid a shuffling, mellowed-out beat, there are lyrics and melodies that would become two of their most beloved songs: Lean on Me (Ah-Li-Ayo) and, if I’m hearing it right, Heart of the Sun. Like so many great songs, they have roots years before: it just takes a while before they get it “right”. Like the rest of this collection, if you have an interest in the more offbeat, interesting corners of 80s pop music, this is an essential part of the path through the decade.
/Various Artists
/Control I’m Here: Adventures On The Industrial Dance Floor 1983-1990
/Cherry Red Records
/Buy: Cherry Red
Cherry Red have done a great number of excellent, important retrospective compilations in recent years, and this one is, I believe, their first attempt at an industrial compilation. Covering the period 1983-1990, even with 44 tracks it is perhaps a little selective in scope, and is definitely missing a number of artists (Cabaret Voltaire feel like a jarring omission from the UK side, I suspect due to rights issues).
But even with those missing, it is a neat reminder that the industrial dancefloor then – as it often can be now – is a diverse, open-minded place. The martial industrial of Laibach rubs against the thumping body music of Nitzer Ebb, the New Beat of The Neon Judgement flowing into the epic, ten minute 12″ mix of Lucretia My Reflection (the mechanised thump of which absolutely deserves its place here, lest you think The Sisters of Mercy are too Goth for this compilation). There’s politics (Test Dept., Die Krupps), too, and even a smattering of US acts on what is mostly a European-leaning tracklist, including the dancefloor power of Die Warzau and also early Ministry.
A compilation like this can never be expected to cover everything, mind, but if you wanted to learn about 80s industrial music from British eyes, you could do worse than start here. Maybe they’ll try a 90s-focussed one – now that I’d be buying in a heartbeat.
/Various Artists
/Tech Noir 2024
/Glitch Mode Recordings
/Buy: Bandcamp
An event I very much wanted to attend this year, but was unable to, was the Tech Noir event in Chicago run by Glitch Mode Recordings, a celebration of all things Cyberpunk. A compilation for event-goers was released online later in the year, and as is traditional with their compilations, it provides a useful snapshot of the label in 2024 and some like-minded artists. If you know Glitch Mode, then you’ll know what to expect: stomping tech-industrial, breakbeats, bass-heavy electronics, and samples for days.
There’s some new artists worth exploring further (The Boundless, A Theme of Noise, Derision Cult, Brad Blank), and of course the old favourites (Go Fight, Acucrack), and Cyanotic naturally appear with a single mix of the stomping power of Crash Override, and an intriguing new track that brings in a guest vocalist and, frankly, sounds radically different. Nearly twenty years since I first heard Cyanotic and the wider Glitch Mode family, they are still an essential collective for futuristic industrial sounds.