Today is a workday for us in Beijing, so there is no review today, but I did want to point you to an Indonesian band called Senyawa, who is featured on Rafaelle Pezzella’s incredible Unexplained Sounds Group‘s digipak retrospective called the Far East Music Collection. It is a reissue of Continue Reading
Industrial
Meat Beat Manifesto & Merzbow – Extinct
Neither Merzbow nor Meat Beat Manifesto will need no introduction to connoisseurs of either Industrial music or the sound that made Wax Trax! Records famous. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought that these two would join forces for an album, and, miracle of miracles, their styles actually work well Continue Reading
Lustmord – Much Unseen Is Also Here
The legendary Lustmord has a new album which releases on March 15, 2024. Judging by the one track currently available to sample, this will be a creepy, heavy album with all the horror of watching a Bosch painting melt while on acid. This will be that deep.
Scanner – Alchemeia
Prepare yourselves for January 19, ten days from now! The legendary Scanner (Robin Rimbaud in real life) has a new album out, “…a tribute to the early 1960s library music culture, applying crude techniques of electronic composition, using a mix of hardware and software. It explores a kind of musique Continue Reading
Sonologyst – Shortwave Spectrum
It has been far too long since I’ve had the pleasure to review albums by Sonologyst, perhaps the finest dark ambient project to come out of Italy in the last decade and impresario of Unexplained Sounds Group, who have introduced dark music from all over the world. This album offers Continue Reading
O Yuki Conjugate – A Tension of Opposites Vols 1 & 2
We had the pleasure of O Yuki Conjugate’s release earlier this year reviewing Volumes 3 & 4 of this series. The old quote still holds: ““Two years after the first two volumes of A Tension of Opposites (ATOO) were issued OYC return to the form they created to house their Continue Reading
Esplendor Geométrico – Compuesto de Hierro+
Esplendor Geométrico was Spain’s first major Industrial band. This album was recorded in 2002 while visiting Beijing, and has been out of print until recently. This latest edition adds four more tracks to this classic LP.
Mykel Boyd – Fever Dreams
Somnimage impresario Mykel Boyd, a stunningly good composer in his own right, has released a 20-minute work of a grim, hazy, yet beautiful soundscape where you feel trapped in the bowels of the set of a sci-fi epic.
Arrowounds – Therianthrope Series
A post-punk/ethereal gem has been bestowed upon us by our friends at Lost Tribe Sounds. Arrowounds tie together influences from bands like, “Can, Bark Psychosis, Young Gods, Slowdive, Durutti Column, Seefeel and much of early 4AD,” according to the band bio, but there is an element that makes this band Continue Reading
[Video] Before Nine Inch Nails: How Industrial Became Pop
As I need a rest day (Beijing has been lovely to return to, but a challenge to adapt to), I leave for you a well-done video on the history of Industrial music and how it mutated into something very different from its original form.