Remarkably, it’s now nearly five years since Transhuman first made it’s splash into the industrial world, and my full marks review still holds. And, I’m delighted to say that the new album is also brilliant, taking similar lyrical themes (scene apathy and fashionistas, medication, politics) as before but advancing the lyrics and the music that […]
Fresh from his great breakthrough album last year, four more tracks to keep us going, from an artist that is continuing to be very interesting indeed.
It’s been a few years, now, since the last Seabound album proper – in fact, nearly four – and in the time since a fan’s appetite has been sated by a live album, a collection of B-sides and rare moments…and also now two albums of Frank Spinath’s “other project” Edge of Dawn, who had been […]
Maybe I’m just getting my hopes up, but it seems like there is something of a resurgence in what might be called industrial music right now. I’m not meaning your average 120bpm oontz-oontz best danced to with the aid of glowsticks, I’m meaning music that sounds like it was forged from steel by people whose […]
It’s long been clear that Matt Fanale couldn’t give a flying fuck about what genre he should fit in, whether he is industrial or not, and what musical fashion he should be following. So after a bunch of well-received albums on Crunch Pod, he’s gone it alone with this one, self-releasing it. And not to […]
You could never accuse David Thrussel of following the herd. Staunchly anti-capitalist, anti-music industry, and more than willing to indulge his apparent love of god-knows-how-many different genres of music and also a wickedly droll sense of humour on every release he can, he has returned under his long-running Snog moniker for ‘their’ first album in […]
Never mind this album having been out a little while, it was quite a while in coming, too. It is five years or so since I first came across Joseph Byer’s work, when a couple of fantastic tracks appeared on two US-based compilations. Not a lot else was then heard for some time, and when […]
This is, by all accounts, a bloody odd coming-together of minds. I’ve come across Punish Yourself before, an insane French industrial-punk-dayglo soundclash of a band, but not Sonic Area, who appear to be a lot more restrained and experimental on first listen. So, why have they come together? It appears to be related to the […]
Time to come clean, first. Despite various people playing previous Lingouf releases to me, I’d never got around to listening to his work of my own accord prior to getting this to review. The website, while a little out of date, helps to give an idea of what you are letting yourself in for – […]
Ok, so time for my roundup of the best albums of the year.
When this artist first appeared on my radar a while ago, it did appear to be something unusual. But then, when I thought about it, it’s not so much of an anomaly these days, perhaps. “Instrumental” industrial acts seem to be ten-a-penny now – but not many of the current acts are looking into the […]
Silent, huh? You have to laugh at the irony of the title, really. Those of you, like me, who were all-too-aware of their debut album and subsequent EP will know full well that silent is about as far from this artist’s modus operandi than it’s possible to be. The first album was a utter brute […]
It’s been a relatively short time, slightly over a year, since Tony Young’s previous album, Love No Longer Lives Here. And, in that time, he’s clearly not been resting on his laurels. Each of the previous albums has shown a distinct progression from the last – not only in quality, perhaps, but also in the […]
It’s three years now since I first came across this artist, on the Glitch Mode compilation H0rd3z Ov Thee El33t!, as one of many artists that I first heard there that I thought “hmm, must check them out again sometime”. Some vanished, others I went and bought the albums. This was one, I’ll admit, that […]
Sometimes, it’s best to ignore all the writing and promo material about a band before listening if you’ve not heard them before. Which is what I did here – other than knowing the label that they were on. D-Trash records are a small label that I’ve not really come across other than their release of […]
In this age of the music industry constantly re-evaluating and repackaging it’s back-catalogues, I guess it was only a matter of time before we saw more of this in the industrial scene. Of course, some labels and bands that I’m sure I don’t need to name have been at this for ages, but I don’t […]
It seems to be an unusual aim in industrial/IDM/whatever-you-want-to-call-it spheres to want to have any flicker of emotion other than rage and anger, although some artists do manage an impressive job of doing so, often by just the use of what would be termed soundscapes rather than including vocals.
It’s hard indeed to describe, or review, what would be termed ‘dark ambient’ in its purest form such as this. It ebbs, it ebbs some more, and doesn’t really flow anywhere except at a glacial pace. It starts out inaudibly, takes nearly two minutes to be heard… But then, when you have forty-one minutes for […]
Samarkande are introduced on their website as an apparently experimental group that create by way of improvisation, and to “break the rigidity of electro-acoustic and electronic music”. Quite what the latter point means in practice is a difficult one to answer, it seems.
It’s sometimes been hard to reconcile the two facets of Chris McCall’s output. The seemingly ultra-serious music with the joyously insane (and whisper it, *fun*) live shows, but here, somehow, we may have the missing link at last. Like some kind of mad scientist (or inventor?) anything that may work is hurled into the mix […]
