|
Act Noir - Cosmo Minimized EP (Self-released Demo) |
|
Formerly Alma Matr, the project grounded in 1994 by Sergio Calzoni, Act Noir are today (with renewed
personnel) Act Noir and Cosmo Minimized is their first output. Slow, atmospheric
and introspective, they base their sound on electronic
instruments (keyboards and samplers), exception made for
guitars and bass. I'd dare to describe them as "electronic
Tindersticks" or "Red House Painters" or something along those
lines. Excellent production-wise, with guitars blending
seamlessly with the keyboards, they enhance the production
with sparse use of ethnic percussion. Also the synthetic
drumming excels in the sound research department. A
competent release, which works very well for those quiet
moments, will no doubt gain them soon a label for a full
length release. www.actnoir.com
|
|
Anne Clark - From The Heart - Live In Bratislava (NetMusicZone) |
|
Anne
Clark's
dark music has influenced many people in the new wave scene
but when I listen to this recording I find a link to
unplugged sessions by Björk
or even Lisa Loeb. It was the first time she went
to Czechoslovakia but she took the opportunity to record an
acoustic session on Slovak Radio in Bratislava on November
17th 2003. Accompanied with guitar, cello, piano and
percussion, Anne sings some of
her greatest hits. After the techno orientated remix album
she did and her regular work, this is something completely
different. And yet, the poetry works excellently with the
acoustic performance. To Music
and Elegy For A Lost Summer are just two
of the great works on this album. I just feel uncomfortable
by Sleeper in Metropolis and Our Darkness
as I will always remind them like highly danceable pieces.
Also there is a long improvisation part by the musicians.
Anne Clark
has always combined poetry with music and this calm,
relaxing album fits her really well. PJVD |
|
Ataraxia - Des Paroles Blanches (Aradys) |
|
Only tree songs and just over twenty minutes are a bit short
to enjoy the wonderful music of Ataraxia. The
very recognisable voice of Francesca is as usual combined
with calm guitar work and relaxing tunes. The first track is
about the place Etretat at the coast in France. The second masterpiece is called
Veules Les Roses and continues with the
usual combination of instruments and vocals. The last song
is different: Hovering is divided in two parts and is a more experimental track
that plays with atmospheres. www.ataraxia.net PJVD
|
|
Audioplug - X-Posed (Decadance) |
|
Not many CDs beg to be played on the strength of their
artwork in the first place, and X-Posed is one
of these. It might be auto-suggestion, but the fresh and
limpid cover artwork perfectly matches (to me) the contents
of the silver disk contained therein. A newcomer trio from
Greece, Audioplug,
navigate the electro-pop world with self-confidence from
their very beginning, blending catching melodies and rhythms
with modern electronics, tight programming and great
attention for the detail. Many elements are inherited from
the technoid stream of sounds, and the wise blending with
melodic and atmospheric synth backdrops leads to a sort of
high tech synthetic pop/EBM blend somehow reminiscent of
some Fortification 55 or
even C-Tek works. Also names as Trylok (are they still around by the way?) spring to mind here,
specially considering the dark-minded vocals which are
certainly another strong argument the band offer in their
favour. The sound is consistent throughout, but the hooks
change from track to track, making X-posed a self-consistent yet varied listening which adapts very
well both to the dancefloor and to a solar listening in the
comfort of your living room. If one were to judge the book
by its cover, X-Posed will easily second that. www.decadancerecords.it/audioplug
|
|
Cell Division - Promo 06/03 (Self released) |
|
Cell Division were grounded in
Zürich, Switzerland in 1995 by four people coming from
different musical backgrounds. With this promotional disc
they will seduce many people. Their music is strong,
powerful and melodic. The opening track Rá really rocks. It combines good female vocals with steady
guitar riffs. Fingerprints is quieter while
The Limetrip introduces another point of
view. Cell Division brought a good introduction
to the band but three songs are not enough to judge. While
the band is currently working on new songs for the next
album you have to take a look at their nice site. www.celldivision.ch PJVD |
|
Cesium:137 - Regrets EP (Tonedeaf) |
|
Regrets
is a sweeping EBM song whose rhythm would quickly remain
impressed in your brain. Especially if you get to hear it 6
times one after the other like on this CD, in different
versions, some remixed for example by Yendri or Haujobb. The song is an interesting
song for the EBM-dance floor and its video is also included
on this CD. www.tonedeafrecords.com
Karin Zenzinger |
|
Corrosion
- Temple of Secrets EP (Self-released Demo) |
|
Corrosion are the offspring of UK goth rockers All Living Fear, in the persons of Matthew North
and Paul Roe. While planning a full-length debut, they
have released this 4-track EP, the second of their career.
They draw heavily from the traditional UK dark rock scene
and the eighties. And, unfortunately, names like Sisters,
Mission, Cult spring
to mind here. Unfortunately, I say, since their first EP
(The Elemental) sounded by large more fresh and inspired. Also
production-wise Temple...is quite a step backwards,
which is a bit strange to say the least. Corrosion don't
have a winner in their hands with Temple and the
wink at the electro dance-floor with the closing re-mix of
the title track does not exactly help. Let's wait for a full
length, fully produced album for another word on
Corrosion. www.corrosionuk.com
|
|
Cranes - Live in Italy (Dadaphonic / Instinct) |
|
This is
an excellent document of the Cranes' 2002
Euro tour and includes, as the title suggests recordings
from the Italian shows, but not only, spanning the entire 14
year career of this unique band. Out of the 14 tracks, 5 are
extracted from their latest album Future Songs. Including then such sought after gems as Adoration, Jewel, E.G. Shining, Far Away, Adrift etc., proposed in their classic live versions, the album
proposes itself as a necessary completion to any fan
discography, but it's also an excellent way to introduce the
band to new listeners, as the track-list is a true best of.
Originally released in USA by Instinct Records and in Europe
on their own label Dadaphonic, it's has meanwhile been
licensed for release in several other European countries. www.dadaphonic.com |
|
Cryonic - Digital Encryption (Self-released Demo) |
|
Billing
themselves as an industrial/metal band, Cryonic
taste the waters with this 6-track demo which is essentially
an exercise in the hard guitar riffs, strong vocals (yet
quite melodic), synth textures and interludes, sparse
samples and a plain drum machine. Although it being plain
raw material, the overall listen is pleasant, luckily the
metal tones are not pushed much to the front. Cryonic
might
have something in the pot, they just need to clarify and
refine the recipes quite a lot. The all-digital production,
for example is either out of place or should be worked on
extensively. Also, either a living-drummer or a thumping
machine (a la Sisters) seems more
appropriate. Intriguing premises, in Digital
Encryption, to work on. hem.passagen.se/danielsnet |
|
Cyanhide - Dancefloor (Self released) |
|
Dancfloor begins with Shrapnels, which
is a dark, mysterious track kicking off close to 45 minute
worth of music by Cyanhide. People sets a powerful note with
more rough guitar lines and also industrial influences. This
is the style that continues to find its way in the whole CD.
Cyanhide's third album has influences from different genres but by
bringing different styles together they create their own
specific music without a doubt. This duo made ten pieces
with mainly guitar, samples and programming. Some of the
songs included here are Teen,
Psychiatry, Hammerland and the outsider
Missed Farewells. cyanhide.com |
|
Days Of Fate - Home-Made Cake Of The Day (EFA) |
|
May be
in an other circle of music friends this album could have a
lot of success, everybody who likes Erasure, Pet Shop Boys or Human League should buy and
enjoy this CD, but for my taste this album is to much "pop"
and too less "synth". www.daysoffate.com
- www.efa.de |
|
DoF - If More Than Twenty People Laugh, It Wasn't Funny (Highpoint Lowlife) |
|
A
one-man project from Philadelphia, DoF produces
instrumental music of a very weird variety, coupling
conventional instruments, such as acoustic guitars and synth
lines with electronic arrangements, mostly taking care of
percussive schizophrenic percussion tracks that clash
head-on with the rest of the music, and also some subdued
textures. It all sounds like some kind of academic exercise
leading nowhere interesting in terms of music output. www.highpointlowlife.com |
|
Drastique - Pleasureligion (Beyond...Prod.) |
|
Formerly
Drastic, we've already met mastermind Chris Buchman on issue VI, when reviewing his previous work, Thieves
of Kisses. Five years of gap and Chris shows
to have considerably sharpened his moods, shifting straight
to black metal with theatrical overtones, abundance of hard
guitar riffs, rapturous drumming (not clear whether
sequenced or human), ever changing vocal tones, a new female
vocalist assuming a more up-front role, synth layers to add
what some call gothic tones. The metal assault is toned down
towards the end of the album with two more atmospheric and
progressive tracks (Immortal Beloved and Voyage Dans La Femme) where
the keyboards assume a more important role, drumming is
taken easy and vocal-wise also the more melodic tones are
used. Were not for these two tracks (making up nearly for 20
minutes of running time), Drastique would have completely fallen outside the scope of Darklife. www.drastique.com
- www.beyondprod.com |
|
Elektronische Maschine - Das Netz (Self released) |
|
Elektronische Maschine, from
The Netherlands, use samples and electronic sounds to create
their songs. Their sound leans to the instrumental
electronic bands of the eighties. The music is not poppy
enough to be synth pop, not hard enough to be electro, not
powerful enough to be EBM, but it is somewhere in between.
Elektronische Maschine succeeded in combining all
the good elements of these genres. Still the sound could use
more diversity and more catchy elements. Das Netz
contains eleven electro pop songs of this trio. PJVD |
|
Empire State Human - Liquid Blue (9th Wave) |
|
Empire State Human
introduce a new 8-track single full of catchy melodies,
beats and synth pop sounds. Liquid Blue showcases John Giacobello production and, with previously unreleased re-mixes and
collaboration with Giallo, Tycho Brache, Count to Infinity, No
Comment, One Lazy Ear and Synthetik FM, any
fan of the synth pop genre should have this CD in their
collection. Liquid Blue is a mid tempo synth track but with a strong melody.
Interesting are the different rework of other tracks by
several bands. This disc has nothing sensational to offer
but still we have to admit that it is steady synth pop you
can not deny. www.empirestatehuman.com PJVD |
|
Evereve - .enetics (Massacre) |
|
Evereve
are another bad case of over-rocking, with very little
relation to the dark scene. Plain and simple indie-rock with
a wink to metal (overheard distorted power guitar chords).
Stop sending us this stuff. www.massacre-records.com
|
|
Explicit Einsam - Auf Ewig (Cerebral Music) |
|
Dispensing
altogether with the new German trends of polluting
dark-minded music with improbable upbeat elements,
annoyingly contrived lyrics (I think I've heard the words
"meine Seele" just a few too many times...) and
un-aesthetical vocals sounding oh so devilishly like
Rammstein on their
worst day (if anything could get worse than that...),
Explicit Einsam propose
instead the fitting soundtrack to isolation and a life in
black and white. Auf Ewig
is nothing more than poems recited monotonically and with no
frills over a dry minimal electronic backdrop evoking
melancholic solitude. Some dark ambience elements drawing
dryly on the neoclassical and employing repetitiveness as a
tool to depict a bleak environment are corroborated by
occasional martial drumming, re-enforcing a feeling of
self-submission or adaptation to the emptiness. Demenz
and Fieber ought to
be the two more "conventional" cuts, also adaptable to the
dark dancefloor. Anagramm and Sequenz V are two instrumental very
well representative of the additional cinematic qualities
contained in this album. The closing 1+1=2? is the black-gloved cold hand leading you
away to nothingness. A remarkable entry in the dark
panorama, showing that simplicity can equally evoke strong
feelings. www.expliziteinsam.de
- www.cerebralmusic.de
|
|
Exposed 2 Radiation - First Diagnosis (Self released) |
|
First
Victim is the artist name that is used to create the music for
Exposed 2 Radiation. This first album brings
electro music but than without pounding beats. Beats and
bleeps are brought together, making electronic music with a
hint to the eighties and even the old new beat scene.
Besides the instrumental Techno Experiment and the short Toxic Waste you
will find the songs Behold and Razor Blade Love on this disc. This weird experimental electronic music uses
samples and techno influences. A good effort for a first CD
but the vocals, and even the lyrics could need some more
attention in the future. users.pandora.be/exposed2radiation PJVD |
|
Fin de Siècle - Sans Titre (Divine Comedy) |
|
Fin De Siècle are
not another band that could be in the Cold Meat roaster.
Stéphane Flauder brings an original mix of scary
black tunes and seducing piano pieces. That there is a lot
of variety in this Frenchman's music is accentuated with
samples and the voice of Florence
Cailleux. Calm gloomy music with creepy
atmospheres could make you think you are on a mystic
graveyard on a cold winter night. The music is gentle but
still there is a dark undertone what makes it extra
frightening and mysterious, as if the music is like a
butterfly that is waiting for the right moment to turn into
a bat. www.findesiecle.fr.st PJVD |
|
Francois Testory & The Electromantics - Sarrazine (Prikosnovenie) |
|
Another
oddity out of the Prikosnovenie camp, Sarrazine is
nothing close to your average listen. The supporting cast to
Mr Testory's "pink" vocals consists of many illustrious names such as
Phil Von of Von Magnet,
Lys, Wild Shores, Mimetic, etc. Very eclectic, up to the point of loosing
consistence, Sarrazine is a listen for total avantgardists
overlooking any threading role between music and vocals.
They don't appear to work very well together in this venture
and the final result tastes of over-pushed avant-gardism. So
if you push yourself over the limits and can over-indulge in
some borrowed Marc Almond-type
vocal numbers, this is for you. www.prikosnovenie.com
|
|
[Grendel] - Prescription: Medicide (Noi Tekk) |
|
Another
good entry in the panorama of beat driven, harsh EBM, made
out of distorted beats, catchy synth hooks, underlying synth
orchestrations, distorted vocals and vocal samples or spoken
words. Prescription: Medicide is the second full length by Nederland's duo
[Grendel] who have quickly raised to notoriety in the scene already
with their first release back in 2001 on Noi Tekk who where
long sighted enough to pick up and release their second
promo CD Inhumane Amusement. [Grendel] essentially work on
the recipe introduced long ago by Suicide Commando, supplying additional testosterone to boot. If not very
original, they are guaranteed to hook the listener up with
their driving synth lines and melodies and introduce some
variation with female backing vocals in Pax Psychosis or what sounds like a
guitar (heresy!) in Pax, one of the more
atmospheric and nicest cuts in the albums, featuring female
spoken lyrics. Crucify is a "made-to-measure" dancefloor filler, Fatal Flow positively contributes to break the fast pace while
Rotting Garden goes "terror" and Kurtz chills down to the end of this 45-minutes adrenalin-fuelled
journey. One note though: the effects on the vocals sound at
times a little contrived resulting in the vocal track not
blending fully with the music. Keeping a firm eye on the
dancefloor, [Grendel]
are guaranteed to appeal to people whose tastes range from
Feindflug harsh electro with industrial tones to SC dark electro-EBM. www.grendel-base.com
- www.noitekk.de |
|
Headphone - Work in Progress 1998 - 200- (Ici D'Ailleurs) |
|
Mysterious
French project seeing the collaboration of many different
musicians playing a large variety of instruments at
different times, apparently rotating around the figure of
Jean Micheal Pires,
although I don't seem to see any mention of his name in the
cover notes. All the same, this gives the impression
(probably correct) of being a collection of improvised
sessions where the most varied instruments pop in then
quickly disappear. Organ guitar and bass are the main
ingredients, but you get also some drums, piano, vibraphone
all the way to trombone and horn, but also some noises,
feedback and electronics. There isn't any structures as such
to the tracks, they are just jamming on, or resembling
sometimes people tuning their instruments in preparation for
a session while you hear sometimes some other music playing
in the background. It is very quiet and quite fine
background music that is there but never catching much or
your attention, unless you purposedly concentrate on it. So
much so, that I realised just now (after having heard this
CD several times) that one track features a snippet from the
Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother album, which pops up then fades out without anyone calling
for it... Definitely avant-garde! www.icidailleurs.com |
|
Immunology - Thorn Dive (SX) |
|
Immunology make electronic music that is
somewhere between industrial and EBM. The tempo is not
really fast but still you will find some tunes to dance to.
The music and lyrics are written by Krustof Peterka
but the band counts four members. The electronic elements
are being interwoven with each other to create pieces that
are finished with raw vocals. When I have to think of bands
to compare them with I must say Mentallo & The
Fixer comes to mind. Besides the
regular songs the album is being blended with short
instrumental tracks with titles such as Sexual
Relationship,
Wasteland, Dressden or Catacomb. With the booklet comes a small
poster as well as most of the lyrics. www.immunology.cz PJVD |
|
Johnny Hollow - Self-titled (Self-release) |
|
An impressive and powerful debut from the Canadian-based
trio, Johnny Hollow. Vincent Marcone, Janine White and Kitty
Thompson present themselves less as a band and more of an exquisite
mesh of audio and visual concepts. Vincent, having
a background in art design, sets the mood with his
bittersweet melancholic story-telling visual style. Together
with Janine and Kitty (both classically-trained
musicians) the three have created an exquisite Freudian
soundtrack of songs that point a magnifying glass at
society's ideals of good, evil, beauty and ugliness. These
morality tales have been told before but Johnny
Hollow presents them in a new and unique light. Their sound is a
lush mix of electronica/exotica/gothic/classical with an
emphasis on keyboards, cellos and voices. Their subject
matter, ranges from organized religion, Russian enigmatic
figures, disturbing 19th century nursery rhymes and on to
more contemporary issues such as disposal pop culture and
consumerism. Vincent has recently branched out into video direction and his
visually stunning results can be seen in
Mushroomhead's new Sun Doesn't Rise video.
When his video direction talent is put to use to compliment
Johnny Hollow's music the results are sure to be equally, if not more,
impressive. www.johnnyhollow.com Ron Sawyer |
|
Kamikaze 52 - Destroy Yourself to Rise (Rabazco) |
|
Known in
some circles as "crossover", is the habit to overlay synths
and elementary electronic elements to distorted power guitar
riffs and fast paced metal drumming. Kamikaze 52 offer
this kind of metal/pop hybrid, enriching it with additional
guitar virtuosism and female voice (treated), thankfully not
trying to emulate for the umpteenth time Theatre of
Tragedy and their hundreds of boring
copycats. They have a couple of fine tunes, but you must be
into the power guitar game to really like this. www.kamikaze52.com
- www.rabazco.de |
|
Klimt 1918 - Undressed Momento (My Kingdom Music) |
|
Undressed Momento begins
with a strange intro after which the Pale Song
introduces the first magical sounds of Klimt 1918.
Klimt 1918 balance between gothic rock and poppy
ballads. Desolate atmospheres enshrouded by vibrant rock
guitars full of melancholia fill this 9-track album that
will certainly appeal to fans the gothic and new wave of the
eighties. This does not mean that their sound is not new.
Their music is original and quite unique. Mid tempo tracks
such as We Don't Need No Music and If Only You Could
See Me Now will seduce many listeners. Klimt 1918 do not conceive their music in an aggressive way, nor do
they make it too slow. The songs are well balanced and
brought together in a de-luxe digipak with a 12-page booklet
illustrated with amazing artwork by the obscure artist
Francesca Di Leandro a.k.a.
Nocturna. www.klimt1918.com PJVD |
|
Mik Jung - Der Herr der Ohrringe (Hörbuch) 2CD (Endless) |
|
On this double CD Myk Jung |