Eighteen years of /Tuesday Tens. My posts could legally drink if they wanted to. The very first one was on 27-Mar 2007, and the world was a very different place back then. Indeed Tony Blair was still Prime Minister, and it should be added that as I write this, we are on the seventh PM since then.
/Subject /Tracks of the Month
/Playlists 
/Spotify / 
/YouTube
/Related /578/Tracks/Feb-25 /Tuesday Ten/Index
/Details /Tracks this week/10 /Tracks on Spotify Playlist/10 /Duration/36:03
Anyway: 580 /Tuesday Tens later, /Tuesday Ten /581 sees us enter the nineteenth year of these posts. This is also the 188th monthly /Tracks of the Month post – which is also how it started, having featured 2,081 songs since then (I have often featured more than ten songs when there is enough that I want to write about). Some other stats over that time: I’ve featured 1,096 different artists, and 148 different artists have been /Track of the Month. The most have been Cyanotic and Seeming (four times each), with Alter Der Ruine, Ganser and Teeth of the Sea making it three each, while only fifteen more artists have gained the accolade twice.
I’m hoping that shows that for the most part, I have a fairly broad taste, and I don’t allow myself to get bogged down in only writing about the same artists. Tastes change – they certainly should over a nearly twenty-year period – and so what I write about now should not be exactly what I was writing about at the start.
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).
/Track of the Month
/The Young Gods
/Appear Disappear
/Appear Disappear
While it has been six years since the last album DATA MIRAGE TANGRAM, The Young Gods have been characteristically busy in the meantime, with their take on The Young Gods Play Terry Riley In C and the subsequent tour taking up a fair bit of that gap.
And boy, have they roared back. The title track to upcoming album Appear Disappear is a sleek industrial rock behemoth that should tick the box of every Young Gods fan. It has a nagging, thrilling looped guitar sample at the heart of it, atop a careering drum pattern, swirling synths and, of course, Franz Treichler’s soaring vocal. There’s nods to my favourite TYG album Only Heaven, sure, but there is a sense that even after forty years, The Young Gods remain a peerless band who sound like no-one else. It took the best part of ten seconds of the first listen to anoint this /Track of the Month, I can tell you.
/YOUTH CODE
/No Consequence
/Yours, With Malice
…which is not to say that there wasn’t stiff competition this month, as it has been a hell of a month for exceptional tracks being released. And we start with the return of EBM-punks Youth Code.
It’s been a long wait: their collaboration with King Josef, A Skeleton Key In The Doors of Depression, came out four years ago, and other than single Puzzle, the last new material before that was in 2016 (!). So some of us might have been forgiven for thinking that might be that.
No such worry: the first track from their upcoming EP is brutal. Full of Caustic Grip-era synths, urgent, gut-punching beats and Sarah stripping paint from the walls as usual with her snarling vocals. A savage, powerful return from one of the most vital bands of recent times.
/Kathryn Joseph
/HARBOUR.
/WE WERE MADE PREY
A minor change results in a radical change to Kathryn Joseph’s delicate songcraft. The first track from her new album has a prominent electronic pulse providing the rhythm, fleshing out her song like never before. Rather than the cavernous spaces that have previously occupied much of her songs, now her vocals bob and float like they are on water, and still as cryptic as ever at first listen. There is something striking and elegant about her songs, with an aloofness on record that dares you to get too close. Interestingly live Joseph is gregarious and hugely entertaining between songs, lending a human touch that is perhaps deliberately avoided on record.
/Bob Mould
/Neanderthal
/Here We Go Crazy
Bob Mould has been a fixture of the alternative world for over forty years. First as a member of Hüsker Dü, then leading Sugar, then a long-running solo career, his work has been hugely influential at every step. His fifteenth solo album is his best in years, and in many ways feels like a trip back to the sound he perfected with Sugar, powerful rock music that’s full of hooks, melody, and heart. Neanderthal is a study in rage, of lashing out without reason and understanding why you get angry, and is a two-minute thrill ride.
/Deathboy
/I Forget Better (Single Mix)
/I Forget Better EP
It’s been some time since the last Deathboy material – and the recent gig with This Is Radio Silence was their first live show in seven years – but this new single is an excellent return. A moody, trip-hop influenced track that has something of Massive Attack in their gloomy late-90s pomp about it, it has impressively gnarly guitars adding spiky textures, and with a new album apparently in the works, I’m now really quite stoked for it.
/Deviant UK
/Let Me Entertain You
/Speak of the Devil
Deviant UK were a fixture of the UK scene for some time, before life and health struggles got in the way, and Jay Smith had to put the project on ice. Now out on the other side of all that, Jay has signed with Armalyte Records, and released a comeback EP containing reworkings of some of their best-known songs, some outstanding remixes (particularly the rampaging, Rammstein-esque take on Raptured Saints by Tasertanz – who turns out to be Martin of Katscan), and an unexpected cover version.
I was perhaps a little hard on this band in the past, as these songs are uniformly pretty great, but the bit that really had me raising my eyebrows was this cover, at least when I saw the tracklist. An electro-industrial band covering Robbie Williams?!? One thing about Jay, though, is that he fully commits to everything he does, and by turning this into a dancefloor banger and doing it straight, it works in ways that would make other artists fall flat. It’s an artist having fun (and perhaps poking fun at themselves while doing so), he very much entertains doing so.
/Korine
/Anhedonia
/A Flame In The Dark
Anhedonia is the lack of interest or pleasure in life’s experiences – something I’ve known well at points in my life (normally at my lowest points) – and from the pointed lyrics to this, it is perhaps evident that Morgy Ramone has reached those depths too. But like all Korine songs, there is a fire and fierce determination in every word, as if Morgy uses these songs as an outlet to kick back and succeed. The song itself is driving, eighties-influenced synthpop with their usual panache, but frankly Morgy is the star of this show and dominates the song like the star they should be.
/Autodafeh
/One Step Forward
/Greed
Autodafeh are Swedish EBM band who formed around 2007, but with a distinct “old-school” feel to their sound, and this site has long been fans of their song-based EBM. This new album comes as a bit of a surprise, though, to be honest, as their last release was about a decade ago, and I have to admit that I thought they’d long since split. Instead, their return after what now looks like a hefty hiatus picks up where they left off, with One Step Forward being a muscular, catchy return to the sound that they nailed a long time ago. The synths are all about the basslines, the beats punch hard, and the vocals have a familiar snarl. It’s great to have them back.
/The Northern Territories
/In Our Darkest Hour (Something New Is Born)
/A Star In Orbit Still
Never mind a decade, the unexpected return of The Northern Territories sees their first new material in over twenty-five years – indeed, since before the Millenium. A band with some well-known fans – Covenant recently posted about their love of their nineties material – they are not a band that are aiming for dancefloor euphoria, that’s for sure. In Our Darkest Hour (Something New Is Born) is a lush, swooning ballad, one that seems to contain a ray of hope for leaving the darkness, and is quite, quite beautiful. In these dark times, maybe songs like this are what we need.
/set dressing
/Date Line
/I can’t be alone tonite
The recent emergence of Mandy, Indiana has been fascinating: watching a band as intrigued by noise as much as post-punk gain a wide-ranging audience so fast perhaps speaks to a more open-minded audience these days. While we wait for new material from the group, their producer and guitarist Scott Fair has released a side-project that explores less abrasive sounds. Indeed, first single Class Valedictorian is beatless, vocal-free and instead waves of gentle synths. Date Line is retro synths and tinny beats, with heavily-treated vocals left to croon in the background. Perhaps it is the colour-filtered video full of kids toys and random items, but there is something deeply unsettling within all of this.