Another late /Tracks post this month: sorry about that. Hopefully will be returning to the normal first Tuesday of the month in September.

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Anyway, it’s been an interesting time recently for new music, and I look at one of the current issues (the use of AI in music) in the last track this month.

A quick explanation for new readers (hi there!): my Tuesday Ten series has been running since March 2007, and each month features at least ten new songs you should hear – and in between those monthly posts, I feature songs on a variety of subjects, with some of the songs featured coming from suggestion threads on Facebook.

Feel free to get involved with these – the more the merrier, and the breadth of suggestions that I get continues to astound me. Otherwise, as usual, if you’ve got something you want me to hear, something I should be writing about, or even a gig I should be attending, e-mail me or drop me a line on Facebook (details below).

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/Track of the Month

/Public Service Broadcasting
/Electra
/The Last Flight

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The last PSB album, which was built around Berlin, felt like a departure too far, even if it had moments of brilliance. So a notable return to archival news footage from the past, and a fascinating story to tell using it, is a joy. Especially with the story they’ve chosen, the final flight of Amelia Earhart, the pioneering pilot who disappeared in July 1937 in the Pacific Ocean, while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world.

The lead single is a taut, hopeful-sounding piece, that tells of the Lockheed Electra 10E, the plane that took them nearly all the way. Interestingly, the long-standing mystery made the news again earlier this year, as an exploration team made the claim that they’d found the plane. It’s by no means confirmed yet – and there are seemingly quite a few sceptics – but if it is, it will be one hell of a find.

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/Everything Goes Cold
/Nadir
/Nadir EP

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Eric Gottesman’s project rumbled back into life recently, with the first new track in a long time (around a decade, I think). True to form, this new track shifts styles again – pretty much each release has sounded somewhat different – and while the video has some fun, humorous touches in keeping with the projects identity, the song itself is a surprisingly dark piece. Slower-paced machine rock, perhaps, but with a post-punk/goth edge that adds a melodic gloom that, strangely enough, suits Eric’s vocals very well indeed. Also of note is the belting remix from Physical Wash (Susan Subtract of High-Functioning Flesh), which transforms it into a New Beat monster for sweaty basement clubs.

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/Pharmakon
/WITHER & WARP
/Maggot Mass

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Another return after some time away is Margaret Chardiet’s Pharmakon project. One of the few pure industrial/electronic noise acts on a notable indie label (Sacred Bones in this case), Pharmakon is anything but easy listening but always fascinating, and it is once again here too. WITHER & WARP opens with a drum beat akin to the listener being lead to an execution, while Chardiet considers her disgust with humanity and their obsession with value, when death means that value is meaningless and we simply become part of the earth again as we decay. Yes, this is heavy, oppressive stuff, but as noise music with something to say, it is well worth heeding.

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/Derision Cult
/Warning Signs
/Mercenary Notes, Pt. 2

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The latest track from the Glitch Mode stable is the new single from Dave McAnally’s Derision Cult, and is an industrial metal stomper of the classic kind. Think classic Ministry or Prong, perhaps: it has a relentless pace thanks to chugging riffs and hulking great beats, and has a sneering state-of-the-world-address feel to the lyrics (short version: we’re all fucked). Oh yes, this absolutely rips and I suspect will sound fantastic live.

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/Bill Leeb
/Demons
/Model Kollapse

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Talking of classic industrial, Front Line Assembly frontman and industrial legend Bill Leeb announced his first ever solo album recently – something of a surprise as FLA have been continually active for some time now. The other interesting thing is that this is, in many ways, an FLA album in all but name – Rhys Fulber and Greg Reely, his usual collaborators, are also credited. But something has shifted in the sound. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but Demons – and indeed the excellent first single Terror Forms – has something subtly different going on, and frankly sounds more vital and interesting than anything from the last few FLA albums. Maybe this is something Bill Leeb needed to do to get away from something that had, on record, become a little formulaic and uninspired, and the results so far show that the decision has paid off.

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/Keef Baker
/Foxglove
/K

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While he’s released music in the meantime under other names, K is the first release under Keef Baker’s own name in some time – timed to mark twenty years since his debut solo work The Widnes Years – and is a return to the elegant, mellowed-out electronics that he’s long been a master of (it’s amazing to think he began his musical career in extreme metal!). A particular highlight on an excellent album is Foxglove, whose slow, shuffling groove is peppered with metallic-sounding synths and mournful piano, and I can’t help but feel that there’s potential for it soundtracking some gritty TV show (and I mean that in a good way).

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/Urban Heat
/Sanitizer
/The Tower

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One of the buzz bands at the moment are Urban Heat, an intriguing Texan group that, like many of their peers, have taken the post-punk template, torn it up and explored new ideas. There are industrial grooves, there are goth-rock moments, there are shredding guitars, but more importantly, there are stacks of memorable songs (opener Take It To Your Grave is a monster of a track). The punchy drum-led rhythms and staccato vocals of Sanitizer remind me of classic Stromkern, too, and like a number of other songs on the album, there is a feeling of support and positivity in the lyrics and delivery that make them stand out in a wider scene that can be rather down on themselves. The album is out Friday.

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/YARD
/Bend

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As with a number of recommendations I get, I can thank my friend Kenneth (who writes over at The ways of exile) for this one: a savage-sounding Dublin group who follow in the footsteps of bands like Teeth of the Sea and SCALER: noise rock that leans very heavily indeed on the noise. While previous single Big Shoes was a wild, techno-based romp, Bend has a steely, mechanised backbone and seething, squalling guitar noise that begs to be played at a deafening volume. They play in London in September.

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/Chat Pile
/I Am Dog Now
/Cool World

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One of the metallic highlights of recent years was the out-of-nowhere success of Chat Pile, whose industrialised, polluted sludgy nastiness was something I couldn’t turn off. Could they do it a second time? From the threatening four minutes of I Am Dog Now, we can put that down as a resounding yes. Vocalist Raygun Busch now sounds even more unhinged than before (how?!?), while the rest of the band unleash a sound that is heavier, thicker and even more oppressive than before. Then there’s the video, showing a low-rent fire-and-brimstone preacher in a dimly-lit, out-in-nowhere church with a malevolent smile that bodes ill. I feel like a need a bath after listening to that.

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/Nature of Wires
/Digital Silence
/Digital Silence

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A prolific remixer for others, it can sometimes be forgotten that Gary Watts and his Nature of Wires project has a hefty body of work of their own, too. The latest addition to that is new album Digital Silence, where intriguingly Watts has turned to generative AI to – and I quote from the press release I received – “give me starting points for songs and to assist with lyrics“. Watts goes on in the press release to be clear that they are doing this as an experiment, but also because it is, in their view, the logical next step after many years of creating music electronically.

I’m no particular fan of AI – particularly the likes of which that are flooding the internet with terrible pictures, videos and music – but thanks to the reasoning on the press release I had to give this a listen. What the AI has done to my ears is to blunt the edges of the Nature of Wires sound, making them sound rather more generic than they have been before. The title track is a perfectly serviceable track about the concerns of relying entirely on technology, but the second track Greed Machine sounds like what I might hear if I asked an AI to give me a dancefloor-based industrial track, and the results are somewhat generic and forgettable – sadly like other tracks later on this album too. Gary Watts is a better songwriter on his own merits.

Someone had to take this step and try it, but if this is the future, I’m now even more concerned than I was before.