Cryogenic Echelon compiles archive material on ‘A Monument To Me’ – Out on Alfa Matrix
Cryogenic Echelon
Australian dark electronic project Cryogenic Echelon has released the digital album “A Monument To Me“via the Belgian label Alfa Matrix. The 37-track set appears as a long-form collection of core songs, collaborations and remixes, and focuses on the period when Cryogenic Echelon operated as the main outlet of Australian musician Gerry (Gerard) Hawkins, with composer and programmer Ayax Ascension co-writing the early catalogue. The project was formed in 2008, when a 17-year-old Hawkins discovered the aggrotech scene via a Grendel track on the file-sharing service Limewire, leading to early demos that evolved into the first Cryogenic Echelon EPs and later albums on CRL Studios.
“A Monument To Me” is available as a digital album via Bandcamp with streaming through all other main platforms.
The tracklist combines the original versions of songs such as “Zaibatsu”, “Fall Of The Reptiles”, “Hate Yourself”, “Elixir”, “Kill The Camera” and “Fucking Money” with collaborations featuring Psykkle, AJ Afterparty, MiXE1, vProjekt, Lucidstatic, Ascension EX and Sleepless Droids. A large section of the album is dedicated to remixes by artists including Grendel, Psyclon Nine, Modulate, Studio-X, Sirus, Vicious Alliance, Biomechanimal, Blast Radius, Defeat, Nitronoise, Dawn Of Ashes, Machine Rox, Sagitario, Heartwire, Ruinizer and Freakangel.
About Cryogenic Echelon
Cryogenic Echelon is a dark electronic project founded in late 2008 in Launceston, Australia by musician Gerard (Gerry) Hawkins. It was at that time Hawkins’ main creative and critical outlet, combining elements of industrial, hard dance, ambient, EDM and adjacent electronic styles.
Early work includes the 2011 debut EP “Fall Of The Reptiles”, released digitally and later folded into the full-length “Costume Of A Saviour”, issued on 24 June 2012. These releases established Hawkins’ collaboration with composer Ayax Ascension, who co-wrote the material.
Through 2013, Cryogenic Echelon issued a run of digital albums and EPs including “Taste Of Failure”, “From Comatose”, “Heartless Disaster” and “Counterfeit God”, some of them released via Static Distortion Records and CRL Studios. The 2013 album “Anthology” collected collaborations with Sleepless Droids, MiXE1, Lucidstatic, [Aphelion], Blast Radius, Biomechanimal, Studio-X, Puzzlehead, K-Not and Human Error, and included remixes by Statik Sky, Ruinizer and Heartwire, with CRL Studios handling the release.
Other titles include “Pandora & Persephone”, “Antipode”, “Demigod”, “Atop The Ivory Tower”, “Quia Multi Sumus”, “Sleepwalking Societies”, “Crawling Through The Dust”, “There Will Be No Mercy”, and earlier work like “DMP Mecha[Nized] 2010”. Across these records, the project worked closely with producers and remixers including Lawrie Bayldon (Studio-X) and Tokee, and with guest vocalists and collaborators such as AJ Afterparty, MiXE1, Lucidstatic and Sleepless Droids.
As Hawkins’ focus shifted towards new projects on Alfa Matrix, Cryogenic Echelon’s role changed from primary band to archival project, while he launched Avarice In Audio, Dream Recall and Prozium. Read the review of ‘A Monument To Me’.
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