(Interview by Janos Janurik) Ever since I got into online music journalism, I’ve always been interested in the background characters around my favourite musicians’ releases that add something important to the product we, the fans end up with.

With this in mind, over the years I have interviewed personalities such as Anton Corbijn (photographer of Depeche Mode and many other music greats), Gareth Jones and Mark Saunders (producers and mixmasters of Depeche Mode and Erasure amongst others).

About eight years ago I had the honour of helping to promote Vince Clarke’s then newly founded mini-record label (VeryRecords) and his releases. In addition to the artists whose albums have been released there in recent years, I also got in contact with Mat Smith, who, like me, is a freelancer – readers of Electronic Sound and Clash know him well – and works as a publicist for VeryRecords as well as being commissioned by Erasure and Mute for a number of press pieces. He also wrote the sleevenotes in the booklet of the new “Cowboy” Deluxe-Edition.

In addition to his journalistic work, he also has his own project “Mortality Tables”, which has just released a new mini-album on cassette and as a digital download. Last November, at the premiere of Vince Clarke’s solo album in London, I had the pleasure of meeting Mat in person and we had a lively chat about our shared passion for music. Knowing how important this project is to him, I approached him and asked him a few questions about it. 

But then life, or rather death, intervened. I didn’t mean this as a cheap shot, but it was indeed a sad event that forced me to make changes to the interview I had with my friend and colleague almost three weeks ago. Now that the aforementioned label is going on holiday, and before I do the same, I would like to bring this exciting musical venture (“The Engineer”) to your attention – and this interview with the man behind it.

SL: Tell us briefly about how you became interested in music. Have you had any musical training, have you learnt to play any instruments? Do you remember the first record you bought?

I grew up in a house where music seemed to always be playing, either on the radio or on my parent’s stereo. My mother listened to a lot of ABBA. Nothing about that was exceptional, particularly. When I used to go to friends’ houses, they always seemed to have the TV switched on, which felt strange to me. My family chose music, and I’ve surrounded myself with it ever since. 

I tried to play the recorder, which was the instrument that most of us learned as kids. My parents gave me a blue one for Christmas one year. I couldn’t play a single note. I briefly learned the basics of notation at school but very quickly forgot all of it. In early high school music classes I was more interested in recording real-life sounds into the Casio keyboard and using those to make compositions. Not long after that, I started making sample-based electronic music on my Amiga 500.

The first album I owned was Nik Kershaw’s ‘Human Racing’. I was given for my birthday the year it was released, along with a Sanyo portable cassette player. I played that album constantly. I wore out the cassette player after two weeks but I still have the ‘Human Racing’ tape and it still sounds incredible to me. 

SL: When did you discover electronic music? And who was the first electronic artist who introduced you to the world of electronic music?

My father is responsible for switching me on to electronic music. There were three pivotal events, and they all relate to times I was with my father.

The first was one evening when my mother was at her restaurant job, and my father was looking after me. I was playing with Lego in the lounge and Gary Numan was performing ‘Cars’ on TV. That performance completely captivated me.

The next was driving around in my father’s car while he did his second job as a debt collector. A friend at work had recorded two tracks from OMD’s ‘Architecture & Morality’ album onto a cassette for him. The songs were ‘Joan Of Arc’ and ‘Maid Of Orleans’, and we’d listen to them over and over.

The third was Soft Cell’s ‘Non-Stop Erotic Videotape’, which he brought home from work one day. That was pretty mind-blowing for a five-year old, and I can only imagine he didn’t realise what it was. It was definitely not suitable for a kid of my age, but, looking back, I don’t remember the imagery – I only recall the music. 

So I owe my father a huge debt for how he shaped my music tastes at a very early age. He was also the one who brought home a cassette copy of ‘The Innocents’ by Erasure and gave it to me. He had no idea quite what he started that day. 

SL: When did you start writing journalistic texts for Mute Records and its artists? What was your first article for Mute and about which artist, which release?

I began a blog called Documentary Evidence in 2003, which was focused on my personal Mute Records collection. I’d just write about the releases from a mostly non-musical perspective, explaining how they made me feel. I still write reviews like that today for Electronic Sound. I also got really interested in telling the stories of specific releases or artists, and that led me to interview people who released music through Mute, or were somehow connected to the label. I have a natural curiosity and inquisitiveness, and that seems to mean people like talking to me and opening up. 

From there I started writing for Clash, and then Electronic Sound and some other places. In 2017 I got asked to chair a panel discussion with Anton Corbijn, Daniel Miller, Paul A. Taylor and Steve Claydon (Add N To (X)) at Rough Trade East in London, about the visual identity of Mute. The first written Mute commission I got was to write a press biography for Chris Carter’s ‘Chemistry Lessons Vol. 1’. I couldn’t believe they asked me to do that, and I couldn’t believe I was being paid to write for the label I loved so much. The team at Mute liked what I did and I’ve been given a few more things to do since then, as well as with the team at BMG who look after the Erasure reissue programme, and Erasure themselves. 

SL: Did Vince Clarke’s VeryRecords label and the associated promotion give you any impetus for your own project, which you called “Mortality Tables”?

Indirectly, yes, but perhaps not in the way you might expect.

My task with VeryRecords was to assemble the press releases. It was the first time I’d worked behind the scenes of a release, where I’d often get involved before the album was even mastered, or before the artwork had even been considered. So I’d be talking to the artists – Reed & Caroline, Alka and Brook – at a very early stage, generally when Vince felt that the album was finished enough for me to listen and for me to start engaging the artists.

It took a while for me to realise this, but the process of working with the artists to write a press release became a collaboration – between all of us, and between my words and their music. I wasn’t just a writer but part of the collective effort to put this music out into the world. I did the same with Nick Hook’s Calm + Collect label, working on releases by Gareth Jones, Spiritual Friendship and others.

In 2019, when I began forming Mortality Tables, I envisaged it as a creative community of collaborators. You can definitely draw a line between that and the ideas that began to form as I worked with VeryRecords and its artists. I also took a lot of inspiration from Vince, who didn’t feel that he needed to only focus on the music that people would expect him to release. That sense of freedom, which Daniel Miller also brought to Mute, directly fed into what Mortality Tables has become. I wanted something where I could work with people making sound art as well as people making images. It had to have artistic breadth. 

I wanted Mortality Tables to be like a gallery, with a portfolio of artists in vastly different disciplines. That’s why Neil Coe deigned the first sleeve image to look like the description of an artwork on the wall of a gallery.

SL: The name of the project refers to the work of actuaries who measure the statistical probability of life insurance payouts. You do something like this in your everyday working life, don’t you?

That’s right. I work with insurance companies all around the world, and have done for over twenty years. I find lots of parallels between the worlds of insurance and electronic music, and the kinds of people I engage with in both of my jobs.

The story goes that I was meeting a friend in a café in Bloomsbury in London one morning. He runs a record label, which is another big inspiration for Mortality Tables. He wishes to remain anonymous, but he is actively involved, in the sense that he must approve anything we decide to do. I call him the Creative Consultant.

So I was meeting him and he had an LP of one of his releases to give me. He asked me if I had a bag to put it in, and I reached into rucksack and retrieved a tote bag. It was from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and had been given to me by an actuary a few years before. The Creative Consultant saw the bag with its logo and Latin inscription (‘e peritia ratio’ – ‘reason from experience’) and asked what it meant. I replied, “It’s all mortality tables and shit like that.” The name stuck.

We created our first Mortality Tables Product that morning. It’s called FORKTALK and is a conversation between two friends. We do not publish the details of our conversations. Its entry in the Mortality Tables Catalogue is MTP0.

SL: Dave Clarkson, who is mostly active in electronic and experimental music and Wonderful Beasts, a sound art/electronic music duo consisting of the anonymous Xqui and Carl Knott (boycalledcrow, Spacelab) were your first artists, right? How did you get in touch with them?

The release that moved Mortality Tables from something conceptual to something ‘real’ was ‘Two Meditations For Freya’ by Goodparley (whose name has now changed to Please Close Your Eyes). That was in 2022. It signalled what I wanted Mortality Tables to be: I would come up with ideas and hand them to someone to ‘respond’ to.

That concept has stayed consistent through the first two years of Mortality Tables. I’ll come up with an idea and pick someone to get involved. At the last count, there are at least fifty people who are collaborators. And it isn’t just sound projects – Mortality Tables encompasses sound, art, and words. And insurance. 

However, all rules in creativity are there to be broken, and I broke my own rules in 2023 with the release of Dave Clarkson’s ‘Ghosts Of Christmas Past (Music From Vintage Toys)’. I had nothing to do with the concept of that album, so I guess that’s a bit like Mortality Tables acting like a traditional record label, which is a description I never want to use. The same is true of Andrew Brenza and Alka’s ‘pod’ and boycalledcrow’s ‘Kullu’. However, all these releases only existed because of an earlier collaboration, and that’s how I got myself comfortable with releasing these projects. You’ll see a few more of those types of projects from Mortality Tables over the next few years. 

In answer to your question about how I find artist, it’s actually really straightforward. Anyone involved with Mortality Tables is someone whose music I’ve written about. As for how I choose an artist for a particular project, that’s mostly a case of matching a collaborator to an idea that feels aligned to what they would usually do. However, some of the most enjoyable projects are where the artist is working a long way outside of what they might normally do.

SL: After artists like Andrew Spackman, Rupert Lally, Simon Fisher Turner and Veryan, two years ago you released a strange and experimental piece called “On Mortality, Immortality & Charles Ives”. The piece is a spoken word piece in which you read out the Mortality Tables’ manifesto: “In life, our one true certainty is death.” This narration, recorded by Gareth Jones, was then sent to Vince Clarke who recorded a musical response to the text, which forms the soundtrack to the release. How did you come up with this, somewhat absurd, idea?

I had bought a copy of a book by Alex Danchev called ‘100 Artists’ Manifestos – From The Futurists To The Stuckists’ at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2021. I read each of the manifestos from groups like the Surrealists, Dadaists and Situationists as if they were short stories, and it became a really profound experience. On the back of ‘Two Meditations For Freya’, people had started to ask me what Mortality Tables was all about, so it seemed completely natural (and not absurd at all) to write a manifesto.

Mostly it was designed to help me understand why I was doing this, and then I decided to explain it to everyone else. That’s when I asked Gareth to record my narration. At the same time I approached Vince and an anonymous sound artist called venoztks to create sound pieces to accompany it.

The listener can judge whether it successfully explains what this is all about, or not. It does explain why the composer and actuary Charles Ives is so critical to the evolution of Mortality Tables. In fact, the second Mortality Tables Product to be made available was a postcard containing an illustration of Ives in front of a mortality table from 1874, the year of Ives’s birth. That piece was a collaboration with Savage Pencil who had illustrated a lot of the Blast First sleeves.

SL: Released on June 16th, the 40-copy limited edition cassette “The Engineer” is a charity project for Alzheimer’s disease featuring Vince Clarke, Penelope Trappes, Chris Illingworth, Barney Ashton-Bullock, Lara Jones, Simon Fisher Turner, Hattie Cooke, Gareth Jones, Veryan and others. The title character is your father, isn’t he? Is that why you chose Father’s Day as the release date? Tell us a bit about this project!

The title character, the engineer, is based on my father. This project dates back ten years, probably longer, a long time before Mortality Tables was an idea.

I wrote a short story that tried to deal with my feelings about my father as he approached retirement. He lived for work, had no hobbies or friends, and I envisaged him struggling to cope with the concept of stopping work. I was angry when I wrote it, but I was also scared for him. It’s fiction, but it’s rooted in his reality. His actual retirement was very different to what happens in the story. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2018, and that’s why we’ll donate all profits from ‘The Engineer’ to the Alzheimer’s Society. Sadly he passed away shortly after ‘The Engineer’ was released. 

When I published the story on my blog, an electronic musician called Laica (Dave Fleet) offered to create some music inspired by the story. He composed a beautiful piece but the project never got completed. A few years later, I came up with a different idea, which involved someone narrating the story with a piece of music behind it. That version also never got off the ground at all, but I liked the idea of asking someone to narrate the story. That’s when I asked Barney Ashton-Bullock if he would do it. He has a brilliant speaking voice, and it was perfect for this story.

It was Gareth Jones who suggested the idea of having different artists respond to different sections of narration. He said it was a bit like the Surrealist game ‘Exquisite Corpse’. I think of Gareth as my spiritual guru. He has a way of unlocking ideas, and freeing you from obstacles that are only there because you’ve put them there. ‘The Engineer’ wouldn’t exist in this form if it wasn’t for Gareth. 

From there, it was a case of picking the collaborators and asking them to respond to a specific 30-second section of narration. No one heard the full story, and no one asked to hear the whole thing. The order the artists agreed to say yes determined which section they got. The only rule I gave them was that their sound response needed to last exactly thirty seconds. 

There are two editions of ‘The Engineer’. One is a digital file that combines the narration and sound responses. The other is a cassette that splits the narration and responses apart. That means the only place you can hear Vince Clarke’s sound response without Barney’s narration is on the cassette, which has now sold out. 

SL: Barney Ashton-Bullock (the creator of Andy Bell’s “Torsten” projects), Vince Clarke, as well as Reed Hays, Alka and Gareth Jones will be familiar to most of our readers, but who are the other contributors? 

Again, everyone involved is someone I’ve written about. When I came up with my collaborator list for this, it was important to me to achieve some sort of diversity. So a lot of the artists here are electronic, but you have artists covering everything from pop to sound art. That was deliberate.

I also wanted diversity of textures. That’s why I included Charlotte Keeffe, Chris Illingworth from GoGo Penguin and Luce Mawdsley. When you put all 29 sound responses together as a single piece, it sounds like a right fucking mess. As the responses were coming in over a 30-month period, I realised that the sprawling, messy quality was a lot like my father’s Alzheimer’s – ideas form, are quickly forgotten before they develop, and are then replaced by something else. That wasn’t planned, at all, but now I can see it was a subconscious idea that must have been there from the moment that Gareth suggested involving lots of artists. 

SL: What plans and ideas are currently circulating in your head? Will it be something journalistic or another Mortality Tables release?

I’m always writing, and I’ve got a few big things underway right now, including something for a label I’ve done a few pieces for before.

In terms of Mortality Tables, now that ‘The Engineer’ has been released, all activities will he paused until later in the summer. We’ve released a huge number of Products in just over two years and I need a break. We’ll return later in the summer with Season 03 of LIFEFILES, which is an ongoing project where artists respond to my really basic field recordings.

We’ll also release a single from Please Close Your Eyes, an album from Andrew Spackman and the full version of Andrew Brenza and Alka’s ‘pod’ collaboration. I’ve been working on one of several projects inspired by Charles Ives, ‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds’, which will be issued as a ‘score’ in October, along with some additional performances of the piece. We’ll begin work on another large-scale collaboration called ‘The Impermanence Project’.

Other things will happen. Other things will not.

More information on Mortality Tables releases.

Use code janos for a 10% discount off anything in the Mortality Tables Catalogue. 

I would like to end this article with a personal message from Mat Smith, who asks the readers and the music listeners to support, if they can, the Alzheimer’s Society, which has received the proceeds of the tape release mentioned in the interview. If you feel able to, please donate to alzheimers.org.uk directly.

János Janurik

I began my career in online music journalism in 2001, writing about artists I had followed since the late ’80s and early ’90s, including Depeche Mode, Erasure and The Cure. I later edited the Hungarian Mute microsite for EMI Music Hungary. This led to interviews with Erasure, Nitzer Ebb and Alan Wilder, and some of those collaborations developed into lasting friendships. Since 2014, I have been part of the editorial team of depechemode.de. I also contribute interviews to Reflections of Darkness, Peek-A-Boo Magazine and Kaput Mag. I maintain a close connection to Mute Records artists and have also supported releases on Very Records. I am proud to collaborate with Side-Line Magazine, where I regularly publish interviews and features.

The new Maduro album, “End in Noise”, recorded between 2023 and 2024, is now available via Re:Mission Entertainment. Maduro, aka Dave Buracker, describes the album as a reflection of the overwhelming visual and auditory static of a world in perpetual conflict. He explains, “Everything is full of noise – the internet, media, propaganda, warfare, consumerism, data, consumption, entertainment. The Modernist poet T.S. Eliot wrote in his 1925 poem ‘The Hollow Men’ that the world would end ‘Not with a bang but a whimper’ – I disagree. We are saturated with noise.”

The album cover is inspired by the early Dadaists, who embraced the absurd and asymmetric elements of terror and apathy during World War I.

Maduro is the alias of Washington D.C.-based dark electronic musician Dave Buracker, who has been creating music under various names for over two decades. In recent years, he has fused genres such as EBM, industrial, techno, and darkwave with new beat and breaks. Maduro gained popularity in the mid-2000s by producing tribal fusion electronic music. Buracker’s work has been featured on numerous label compilations, from Alfa Matrix to Universal Music Group, and he has collaborated with artists like Miss Kitten, the Horrorist, Wumpscut, Jean-Luc De Meyer, Amon Tobin, Venetian Snares, and Muslimgauze. Additionally, he has remixed tracks for Dean Garcia, HEALTH, Violent Vickie, and others.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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The French electronic band Celluloide ‘s latest album “Silences We Shared” has encountered an unforeseen hiccup ahead of its release this Friday. According to the band’s Marseille-based label BOREDOMproduct, all major digital streaming platforms have blocked the album’s release due to its cover art, which includes a graphic element resembling a barcode.

This issue arises just as the band prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their second album, “Words Once Said”. You can check the cover below. Intriguingly, the design of the new album pays homage to this earlier album, which also featured a similar barcode-like design on its original cover. Despite the original album’s long-standing availability on these same platforms, the new album’s cover has triggered content restrictions.

As of now, it appears that negotiations with the streaming services have not yielded any positive results. The album, which was anticipated to be an important release commemorating two decades of the band’s earlier work, may not be available for streaming if the issue remains unresolved.

The decision to block the album due to its cover art has been described by the label and band as “unreal” and “absurd”.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Russian exiles VEiiLA have shared a new music video for “Do You Hear Me” from their latest album “Sentimental Craving For Beauty”, out on Projekt Records. The video is compiled of various bits of footage taken by the band while touring in Armenia, as well as fan-made concert-videos shared on the internet.

This is what VEiiLA themselves have to say about this video: “We always have a camera with us. Every time we climb a mountain pass, or ride through a snowy fog-covered plain, or check in the hotel room that looks nothing like a hotel room, but more like a photo studio, or crush somebody’s couch and try to gain trust of their scared dog in the wee hours of the morning, before you need to pack up and move on, or see the venue hosts hurriedly trying to heat up the stone cold room, because no one could expect that winter, with snow and razor sharp cold wind would start exactly today (not the weathermen at least), or play a show at the tiny wine cellar, even though yesterday it was a huge echo-y warehouse, or pass through the same town 6 times and each time it is completely different… This is the time when the chaos exposes itself, when one sees life for what it is – a stream of orderly absurd, meaningful nonsense and presupposed accidents. This is also when life finally makes sense… This road movie collage of random impressions is our homage to the life of a musician, a chaotic rambling of the modern gypsies, which we crave, love and miss when it’s over”

VEiiLA, who call themselves “a band without a country”, had left their home in Russia in March 2022, in protest of the war with Ukraine and the atrocities of the horrible autocratic regime. After finding temporary sanctuary in Armenia, they recorded their second full-length album “Sentimental Craving For Beauty”, which was released in September 2023 on Projekt Records (Portland, Oregon, USA).

You can our interview with VEiiLA for extra information.

“Sentimental Craving For Beauty” is Name-Your-Price at Bandcamp and available at all major streaming platforms.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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The industrial rock band, Fleischkrieg has just unleashed their new single, “I Believe In Gnomes”. “I Believe In Gnomes” is a song about our beliefs, who shapes them, and why.

The band explains further: “Many things that were too absurd to believe in (such as UFOs) have now been proven to be true. The crackpots have been vindicated. Now the gnomes ask us to consider what else have we been lied to about, and why. They ask us to examine our beliefs. Are they really ours to begin with or did we inherit them from a society bent on hiding the truth from us?”

The single was produced / mixed / mastered by Logan Mader who has produced and mixed acts such as Fear Factory, Divine Heresy, and Five Finger Death Punch.

“I Believe In Gnomes” is available on all major digital outlets including Spotify and Bandcamp.

The group, currently based in L.A., cite Rammstein, DK-Zero, Die Krupps, and Lord of the Lost as musical influences. For their live shows they have added Nick Mason on drums and Kaylie Cortez on synth/keyboards.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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“The Absurd Silence Of A Mute World” is a collaborative album by multi-instrumentalists Samuel Vaney and Loïc Grobety under the OLOMUHD moniker. The project was initiated in early 2022 and combines their interests in abrasive textures and deconstructed rhythms.

You might know Samuel Vaney from his work with Eeli Helin as part of the Swiss/Finnish drone-rock duo known as Fargue. This group, founded late in 2019, is notable for its multi-instrumental prowess, focusing on ambient, drone, and post-rock genres.

The album is out via the French label Cyclic Law. It holds just one track that explores ‘both contemplative and intense soundscapes’.

Drummer Michael Anklin contributed to the album as well next to vocalists Hemlock Smith and Mütterlein. Samuel Vaney handled the mixing and mastering in Switzerland. The album’s artwork was created by Stefan Thanneur.

It will be released on March 29th in a limited edition of 300 CD copies, each presented in a 6-panel digisleeve with matt lamination with a running time of 43 minutes and 31 seconds. You can order it here on Bandcamp.

You can check a few fragments below.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Wave-Pop, Dark-Pop, Electro.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: By the end of 2023 German formation Absurd Minds unleashed their eighth opus which came three years after “Sapta” and twenty three years after their official debut album “Deception” -which by the way was already released by Scanner.

Content: This is an album without surprises and which will be liked by the growing fanbase of the band. The songs are driven by this unique Absurd Minds Electro/Wave/Pop touch mixing harder, dancefloor-orientated songs and softer, melancholic; Ballad-like cuts. I once more experienced Absurd Minds as the sonic hybrid between Project Pitchfork and The Sisters Of Mercy.

+ + + : The band doesn’t try new tricks or innovation but simply achieved a professional and alluring production. I prefer the ‘harder’ cuts whereon the band excels in great crafted songs carried by strong melody lines. I also like the symphonic, electronic, arrangements the songs have been made of while Stefan Grossmann remains a great, and charismatic, singer.

– – – : I never have been a huge fan of the band’s softer side and these cuts aren’t still my favorites after having heard the new work.

Conclusion: Absurd Minds strikes back in style once more confirming they’re a band with a very own and recognizable sound.

Best songs: “A Million Miles”, “No restraint”, “Silicon dreams”, “Gravitas”.

Rate: 8.

Artist: www.absurdminds.de / www.facebook.com/AbsurdMinds

Label: www.darkdimensions.de /  www.facebook.com/pages/Dark-Dimensions-Label-Group/486014725206

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

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The French BOREDOMproduct label has just launched the debut single and video “La Machine Qui Ne Sert à Rien” for the all new project La Machine. Behind La Machine we find some habitués, namely Pierre Pi (Komplex, Position Parallèle, Communication Zéro…) and Éric U0 (Celluloide, Thee Hyphen, Signal~Bruit…).

The track is actually a minimal electro cover of the 1967 proto-punk track by French model/singer Dani and comes with the extra track “FFP2”. Exclusive to the EP is also a dark and complex cover of the classic song “Pop Corn”. The tracklist for the EP is wrapped up with the extended versions of the first two tracks.

Inspired by fantasy films and B-Movies from the 50s, La Machine recycles science fiction and horror movies, and fits in a present where the absurd, the nuclear nightmare and the control of individuals are never very far away.

The debut single is available in several formats, a 5-track CD, a 10″ vinyl EP as well as a digital single out now and available via the BOREDOMproduct label shop.

Here is the video for “La Machine Qui Ne Sert à Rien”.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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The Swedish EBM act ELM is back with an all new album via Alfa Matrix later in October. “Penetrator” is the project’s third one and the release comes right after the release of the EP “Steel Hope” out since May. The first pressing of “Penetrator” comes out as a limited deluxe 3CD digipak edition.

The album handles mass manipulation, social media insanity, violence, propaganda, pandemic and war and thus really captures the atmosphere of the past years’ chaos in an absurd world along with personal hardships and battles. Musically, this is definitely a must-have for fans of Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and related acts.

This first edition of “Penetrator’ holds 2 exclusive bonus discs. The first bonus CD is an extra 8-track CD with 4 additional songs plus 4 remixes including one by Patrick Codenys of Front 242. The 3rd CD is the “Fragments Of Longing” album which comes under the moniker of Peter Elm. The album is a mostly instrumental synthpop album which offers an extra dimension of Peter Elm.

You can order the 3CD set right here via the Alfa Matrix webshop while the download is available in two parts via Bandcamp as you can see below.

And here is the release available on Bandcamp, split up between the “Penetrator” album in a bonus tracks edition plus the extra Peter Elm album “Fragments Of Longing”.

Here is the EP “Steel Hope”.

Videos

Two videos were already released a while back; “Steel Hope” and “Sex Junkie (Abuser Mix by Patrick Codenys of Front 242)”.

Eldrina Mich

As Eldrina Mich I work as a go-between and a devil’s advocate when it comes to Side-Line. If our own staff needs to be interviewed then ask the questions no one else dares to ask.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Future-Pop, Electro-Pop.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: German trio Fractal Age strikes back with their second opus. Markus Horschig (Neuroklast, ex-ReAdjust), Jens Minor (Chainreactor) and singer Sascha Tümmler released the debut album “Modern World” in 2019.

Content: Even if this album is driven by Electro-Pop influences, the sound became harder and more future-Pop driven than its predecessor. It’s a catchy production carried by bouncing kicks and revealing a few harder elements like EBM bass lines. There are a few ‘softer’ pieces featured but the main part of the work stands for powerful Electro/Future-Pop music which sometimes reminds me of Neuroticfish. The 3 last songs are remixes by Intent:Outtake, Absurd Minds and Blue Images.

+ + + : There’s an evolution from the debut album towards the new one; it’s more into Future-Pop and I experienced this evolution has ‘harder’ which I prefer. The songs are well-crafted and there are a few noticeable songs featured like “The Beauty Of Truth” and “Sign”. “Another Way” reveals EBM influences and is another attention grabber.

– – – : Fractal Age isn’t exactly setting the world of Electro/Future-Pop music alight. The work even has something predictable but globally speaking it’s a fully enjoyable work. I’ve been less convinced by the softer parts like “Spiegelbild”.

Conclusion: If you like Electro-Pop with a heavier touch and a darker side “Another Way” is an album to discover.

Best songs: “The Beauty Of Truth”, “Sign”, “Another Way”, “Questions”.

Rate: 7½.

Artist: www.facebook.com/FractalAge

Label: www.darkdimensions.de /  www.facebook.com/pages/Dark-Dimensions-Label-Group/486014725206

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Dark-Ambient, Cinematographic.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Randal-Collier Ford remains a prolific project, this newest album having been released at the end of 2020. The inspiration is taken from some anguished and sci-fi like natural elements among the forests of South-America.

Content: “Advent” only features 3 tracks. The first and last cuts are extended pieces, which have been meticulously built up. You get the feeling being imprisoned by heavy, breathing noises and blasts. Some droning sounds are resonating in the background. You’ll also notice more delicate and mysterious piano playing. The other cut left has been composed together with label mate Northumbria. This track is shorter, but maybe a bit darker and more hostile.

+ + + : This is a great work featuring 3 fascinating pieces. I especially like the first- and last one. “The Second Wound” is a masterpiece and perfect finale to this album. I especially like the last part of the cut with the crescendo percussions section, accentuating the terror supporting this album. It’s a strong piece of music with a true visual appeal. I also recommend “Eyes Of The Temple” resulting from a great collaboration with Northumbria.

– – – : The only single regret I could imagine about this work,  is that there are only 3 cuts!

Conclusion: Randal-Collier Ford probably accomplished his most poignant and most brilliant opus to date!

Best songs: “The Second Wound”, “Beckoning Absurd Shapes”.

Rate: (8½).

Artist: www.facebook.com/randalcollierford

Label: www.cryochamberlabel.com /  www.facebook.com/CryoChamber

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: EBM, Dark-Electro, Electro-Pop, Body-Pop, Electro-Wave.

Format: Digital, 2 CD.

Background/Info: Scanner is a subdivision of Dark Dimensions, which this year celebrates its twentieth anniversary. Set up by Francesco D’Angelo, Scanner has been always and mainly devoted to Electronic genres like EBM, Dark-Electro and Electro-Pop. The compilation features twenty six artists and songs reminding us of the great artists from this label.

Artists: Gin Devo, BhamBhamHara, Autodafeh, Kreign, DSTR, Fractal Age, Destin Fragile, Blue Images, Twins In Fear, Cyan Inc, Vomito Negro, [:SITD:], Eden Synthetic Corps, Mechanical Moth, Centhron, Intent:Outtake, Disorder:Mankind, Das Werk, X-Fusion, Spetsnaz, Grausame Töchter, Epinephrin, Black Heaven, A Spell Inside, Absurd Minds, Straftanz. 

Content: This sampler is a perfect way to (re)discover the Scanner label roaster, which features some great EBM names such as Autodafeh and Spetsnaz while other names such as [:SITD:], Vomito Negro + Gin Devo, Eden Synthetic Corps and Absurd Minds were more active in a darker EBM format, getting pretty close with pure Dark-Electro. Centhron and X-Fusion are for sure Dark-Electro! Other bands like BhamBhamHara and Straftanz are more representative of the progressive (Techno)-EBM format. A Spell Inside remains one of the ‘oldest’ bands from the roster and still one of the few to deal with Electro-Pop. And then there’s Grausame Töchter, which remains a very unique experience in sound. The compilation also features a few bands we’ve a bit forgotten like Fractal Age, Destin Fragile, Epinephrin. It’s also a while ago we’ve heard something from Cyan Inc. And there’re new signatures like the promising EBM formation Kreign and the Experimental-Electro Twins In Fear plus a few totally unknown names like Das Werk and Disorder:Mankind.

+ + + : When you take a brief look at the names featured at this compilation you can only, but agree Scanner has been for numerous years one of the leading labels from the Dark-Electro scene. But this compilation becomes really interesting when you’ll know that nearly all of the tracks are exclusive ones and/or rare edits. Frank D’Angelo always has had a nose to sign great artists, Kreign being the new sensation! My favorite cuts from the album are the ones by X-Fusion and Grausame Töchter remixed by And One.

– – – : This compilation doesn’t cover the entire Scanner roster, which says something about the Electronic welfare from the label. Some artists that haven’t been featured (because they’re no longer part of the label) are Amnistia, Stromkern, Distorted Reality, Sleepwalk, Page 12, The Eternal Afflict, Cycloon, Sara Noxx, Re:Work, Spiritual Reality, Inside, Das Präparat.. More than enough to fill an extra disc and they all are still part of this great label’s history.

Conclusion: This compilation is a part of history; 20 years of great underground music by Scanner!

Best bands: X-Fusion, Grausame Töchter, Autodafeh, Straftanz, BhamBhamHara, [:SITD:].

Rate: (8½).

Label: www.darkdimensions.de /  www.facebook.com/pages/Dark-Dimensions-Label-Group/486014725206

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Out via SkyQode is the newest Unitcode:Machine single “Instigator”. The new single by this very enjoyable EBM / industrial act is taken from the band’s latest album “Tyranny” showcasing the band’s distinctive blend of EBM and industrial .

In addition to the title track, the single features remixes by Freaky Mind, Elezoria, and Invisible Devastation. This single should please fans of Imperative Reaction, Absurd Minds, Decoded Feedback and the like.

Unitcode:Machine is a US-based band which was formed in 2000 by Eric K.. Their first official release landed in 2004 and mixed multiple genres like EBM, industrial, synthpop, and many others.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Larme Blanche (which can be translated as ‘knife’ or ‘rudimentary weapon’) is a brand-new project driven by an artist wearing a mask and keeping his name secret. He claims his music is more important than his face and even the label, Unknown Pleasures Records, where he released his debut album “Demain Est Mort” doesn’t know his identity. But music indeed is more important than faces and the minimal-electro composed by this artist is absolutely worthy of examination. All songs are sung in French mainly revealing critical and political subjects recovered with obscure and gloomy atmospheres plus danceable sequences. This album took me by surprise and incited me to get in touch with the man with the mask…

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: You don’t want to reveal your identity, so what fascinates you working anonymously? Or is it just a strategy to keep people busy to guess who’s hiding under the mask you’re wearing? How did you get interested in electronic music to finally set up Larme Blanche?

LB:My identity is not important, but the music is. Wearing a mask (a balaclava, precisely) is not a strategy, or a marketing shit. I’ve read a lot about the symbols of the mask, and I think hiding my face and my own identity is a way for me to be truly myself. I can say whatever I want, without any filters or any fears to be judged. Hiding is for me artistic freedom.

Honestly, playing electronic music is not a choice. It’s just the best set up if you’re alone in a musical project. With my synths and drum machines, I can play nearly everything by myself. I just sometimes need the help of true musicians to reach a higher level, like Quentin Dubarry, who plays saxophone on the song “Overdose d’Épicure”, or my friend Fred that mixed and mastered my music.

Q: What was your initial purpose when starting this project? Did you have specific ideas/criteria in mind about sound, influences, equipment, ao?

LB: At the very beginning, my purpose was to make a lot of noise. At the time, I wanted to play with the industrial/noise codes and techno music. At first, I thought the project will be fully instrumental, no voice. Probably because I like cinematic music. But life is full of surprises, right ? One day, I put my voice on the song “Paris La Nuit”, and I thought it sounded very cool. So in the end, I decided to focus more on the vocals and lyrics.

About the influences, I would say Suicide, Chris & Cosey, Throbbing Gristle, D.A.F., Death In June and a lot of French wave, from Taxi Girl to Etienne Daho. The movies of Gaspar Noé also had a big impact on me.

Q: What’s your main focus when you compose a song and what are the different stages you’ve to go through to achieve a song –and an album?

LB: I don’t have a formula. I can start with a sound, a beat, a synth bass line, sometimes with a sample… It really depends of my mood. Usually I mess around with sounds for hours, and I see how far it goes. I have hundreds of little loops in my archives. The most difficult thing is picking the good ones and turn them into a ‘real’ song. Usually, I pick the ones that inspire me vocally, or the ones that sound weird.

About the lyrics, I like to write down ideas when it comes, wherever I am. Sometimes when I walk in the street, sometimes in the train… So as soon as I have a good instrumental music, I just have to read my notes again and find the idea that fits the best with the track.

Q: All songs have been sung in French while the lyrical content appears to be engaged, critical, political, sensual, sometimes featuring historical samplings (cf. “Le Dernier Soupir”), dark and into poetry. Tell us a bit more about this essential element of the album and your project?

LB: Singing in French is at the core of this project and it will never change (except for covers, like the one of Death In June that I just released). When you play rock’n’roll, it’s easy to sing in English, because it works well with gimmicks. But I think French language work better with electronic music. It’s important for me to sing in my native language, because it forces me to work harder and deeper on the words. Believe me, writing those lyrics was a long process, way longer than the music!

I may hide behind a mask, but lyrically I’m naked here. I don’t know if this record is engaged, but it’s critical and political for sure. A song like “Assez!” was inspired by the yellow jacket movement that happened in France last year. I’ve seen far-right and far-left people crushing my country to the bone, and it made me sick. As a result, I wrote this song. I’m also a huge fan of History, as you can hear in “Le Dernier Soupir”. In that song, I wanted to superpose the values of our past heroes (here a speech of André Malraux for the Jean Moulin funerals, he was a famous resistant that fought against the Nazis) to the vacuity of our current heroes. Do the pop stars, starlets, actors and TV reality people deserves to be our heroes? I’d like to make people dance, but I’d like to make them think too.

Q: The title song “Demain Est Mort” is the last –hidden, song from the album. What did you try to express with this title, which also sounds as one of the most enraged songs of the album?

LB: Enraged, that’s a good word to describe it! At first, this song was just a fist in the face. I came back at home one shitty day, after another crack head of Paris insulted me in the street. It’s those kind of days when everything turns bad and when you want to kill everyone. So instead of turning into a mass murderer, I decided to write about that feeling. And it became “Demain Est Mort”, which means “Tomorrow Is Dead”.

It was a cathartic experience, it all happened very quickly. In a way, I wanted to sound like a nihilistic version of this old French punk band called Bérurier Noir.

Q: You released a few clips and it’s interesting to see the contrast in the themes between “Paris La Nuit” (about the French Capital) and “Taiga” (about nature). What did you try to express here?

LB: The message of “Paris La Nuit” is very simple; it’s all about this city that makes me sick every day. Usually, when I travel, all the people I met are always fascinated about Paris, you know with all the clichés: the city of love, so romantic blah blah blah… But I live in a very popular area of the city (where the video was shot) and it’s not glamorous at all. It’s full of crack heads, dealers, gangs, violence… With people literally sleeping on the pavement (as you can see in the video clip). This song is a vision of my Paris, the real Paris, not the one for tourists.

“Taïga” in a way is a response to this urban decay. I wrote that song after a trip in the Canadian taiga last Summer. I felt so good in the nature that I wanted to disappear there, and never come back to the madness of a big city. What’s the point of living in a world like that, were a phone made by a child in China is more important than the wildlife? How absurd is that? I think humanity has lost itself into consumerism and turned into a freaky monster. In those troubled times, nature appear to me as a peaceful shelter.

Q: What are the further plans?

LB: I’ve just released a cover of “Break The Black Ice” by Death In June for the tribute album “Honoris DI6” to be released on Unknown Pleasures Records in June (obviously). I also have an unreleased track called “Amor À Mort” that will be released on the vinyl compilation “My Precious! Vol. 3” (on the Belgian label Red Maze Records). It’s a very weird, erotic track inspired by the EBM of D.A.F. and the sadomasochistic band Athamay. It smells like whip, leather and latex. In June, I’ll also publish an experimental video of a new song called “Le Poing Et La Chaîne”, which I’m very proud of. It was made in confinement and it’s raw and very industrial, with live recordings of percussions played with chains. There is a big work on the sound and I think it can give some clues about the future direction of the project…

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Wave-pop, dark-electro, EBM.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: The album “Tempus Fugit” (2017) marked the return of Absurd Minds after an absence of seven years. This year the band celebrates its twenty fifth anniversary. But better than releasing a ‘best of’-album Absurd Minds strikes back with their seventh full length album featuring twelve new songs.

Content: Absurd Minds moves on composing the ‘classic’ songs that we are used to hearing from them. The influences are once again covering different genres; from dark-pop and wave-pop towards a few ‘harder’ cuts, mixing electronics with guitar. The charismatic vocals of their front man Stefan Grossmann remains another main characteristic of the band. This album features several beautiful songs leading the listener into reverie. Other harder cuts are more danceable, injecting some variety to the work.

+ + + : This album is made to dream away; globally speaking there are more wafting songs featured instead of harder, danceable pieces. I however like the ‘hard’ side of the album revealed at “Dear End”, which sounds as the offspring between Project Pitchfork and The Sisters Of Mercy. Another noticeable song is “One Blood”, which is driven by great electronic sequences. This song could be a potential title track for an EP. I also like the melancholia hanging over “A Light That Shone” and the refined touch of “Turning Away”.

– – – : Absurd Minds remains a rather unique band in their genre although after twenty five years I must say the songs have become a bit too predictable.

Conclusion: Absurd Minds remains a fixed value in an electronic approach only a few bands are dealing with. I don’t consider “Sapta” to be their best work in history although it’s a fully accomplished work.

Best songs: “One Blood”, “Dear End”, “A Light That Shone”, “Turning Away”, “Carry The Flag”.

Rate: (7½).

Artist: www.absurdminds.de / www.facebook.com/AbsurdMinds

Label: www.darkdimensions.de /  www.facebook.com/pages/Dark–Dimensions–Label–Group/486014725206

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Out now is “Paper Empires”, a new single by the US-based EBM / industrial act Unitcode:Machine. The title track is taken from the band’s latest album “Tyranny” which was released in late 2019. The album spent several weeks in the German GEWC charts and received a lot of positive feedback from fans and DJs worldwide.

“Paper Empires” comes coupled with remixes done by Uncreated, Technolorgy, Switchface and GW4, each adding their own unique feel to the title track. If you are a fan of Imperative Reaction, Absurd Minds, Decoded Feedback and the like, then this is something for you.

Check it out for yourself!

Unitcode:Machine was formed in 2000 by Eric K.. With their first official release in 2004, the band established themselves as mix of multiple genres that inspire the group like EBM, industrial, synthpop, and many other. In April 2019, Unitcode:Machine joined the SkyQode label roster of artists.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

side-line.com

Out now via SkyQode is “Army Of Impostors”, a brand new single by Stars Crusaders. Mixed and mastered by Nick of Absurd Minds, the title track combines elements of futurepop and EBM with a futuristic sci-fi atmosphere.

In addition, the single features stylistically diverse remixes by Unity One, Esplosioni Controllate, Egoprisme and c0r3 c1ty, as well as a new version of “Convex Vision” from the band’s debut album. “Army Of Impostors” is the first single off the third album entitled “M.A.T.E.R.”, due in 2020.

The single is accompanied with a music video as well.

Tracklist:

• Army Of Impostors
• Army Of Impostors (Unity One Remix)
• Army Of Impostors (Esplosioni Controllate Remix)
• Convex Vision (2019 Version)
• Army Of Impostors (Egoprisme Version)
• Army Of Impostors (c0r3 c1ty Remix)

You can also check it already on Spotify.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Dark-electro, EBM, new-wave, electro-punk, metal-rock.

Background/Info: Thee Flanders is a German psychobilly formation, which has already released several albums throughout the years. They sometimes seem to cover famous songs. This album features 20 remixes by an impressive list of mainly electro-underground formations.

Content: The main songs of this release are “You Spin Me Round” from Dead Or Alive and “Nightmares” from A Flock Of Seagulls. Both 80s new-wave hits have been covered by Thee Flanders, sung together with Bela B (Die Ärzte) and Markus Meyn (Camouflage) and remixes by Leather strip, Die Krupps, Blind Passenger, Robert Görl, Ad:Key, Beborn Beton, Scheuber feat. G. Thomas, Patenbrigade: Wolff, In Strict Confidence, Absurd Minds, Mirko Hirsch, Head-Less, White Trash Wankers, T.A.N.K., Sound Tessellated, Beyond Obsession, Tomas Tulpe, Modekay, Keller Technik and The Klaak Syndrome.

The result is a very diversified release, which mainly sounds electro-like, but moving from darker-electro remixes to EBM to electro-minimal, but also electro-punk, new-wave and somewhat metal-orientated work. Notice by the way that White Trash Wankers is the only band that remixed another song (cf. “Buried Alive”).

+ + + : This album definitely sounds like a challenge, but especially for the fans of the band who I can imagine aren’t used at all to hearing their favorite band remixed by electronic formations. It’s not only a challenge, but I like this originality and it could be fun to hear one of those famous electro-acts featured on the album getting remixed by psychobilly bands. Why not? But the main point is that especially the remixes of “You Spin Me Round” feature a few outstanding versions. I want to make a special mention for the originality and minimalism of Patenbrigade: Wolff, the groovy approach of Head-Less, the harder version of Die Krupps and into EBM transposed remix of AD:Key. Another noticeable remix is “Nightmares” from Leather Strip.

– – – : There are a few less inspired remixes featured, but that’s rather understandable when you get a total amount of 20 remixes. But the main point remains for sure the reaction of the Thee Flanders fans about this totally weird challenge.

Conclusion: Is it just for fun or a psychobilly formation that has found a way to enter electro clubs? Whatever it is, this work is DJ food and be sure you are going to dance to it!

Best songs: “You Spin Me Round – Patenbrigade: Wolff Mix”, “You Spin Me Round – Head-Less Mix”, “Nightmares – Leather Strip Mix”, “You Spin Me Round – Die Krupps Mix”, “You Spin Me Round – Mirko Hirsch Mix”, “You Spin Me Round – AD:Key Mix”.

Rate: (8).

Band: www.theeflanders.de / www.facebook.com/theeflanders

Label: www.half7records.de /  www.facebook.com/Halb-7-Records-203287363058978

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Absurd Minds started in 1995 as a small project featuring Tilo Ladwig and Stefan Grossmann. They got in touch with Francesco D’Angelo (Scanner/Dark Dimensions) and quite progressively the Dresden based duo became a real band and started to release their first official productions. The band progressively gained a serious reputation releasing acclaimed albums. The last work was released in 2010, but seven years later now the band is back on track with the album “Tempus Fugit”, which probably is their best work to date. I got in touch with Timo Fischer.

(by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: “Tempus Fugit” is the first new album in seven years! Why such a long break and what happened in between “Serve Or Suffer” and “Tempus Fugit”?

Timo: Anyone who ever has begun to make music knows that it accompanies you during your entire life. There are times when other things seem to be more important. Love, marriage, family, building a house, job… There is no time left, but one day when the desire to make music again awakens, you for sure move back. It took us 7 years to get back into music and now it was just time to break the silence.

Q: I experienced “Tempus Fugit” as a rather classical Absurd Minds-album although you most diversified work to date. What kind of album did you want to compose and do you see some evolutions compared to the earlier work?

Timo: When you start composing songs, you have an idea in mind that you want to implement. You’re use your experiences, technical knowledge and possibilities, as well as musical preferences. This automatically creates something close to one’s own musical tradition. “Tempus Fugit” is therefore a typical Absurd Minds album.

Q: How did the writing process of the new album happened?

Timo: The song writing process can be described as ‘Janus-faced’. This has always been the case and was made clear once again this time. The creating of the music was surely the most convenient part of our work. Writing the lyrics is really more of a sweaty procedure. The art is to manage this ambivalence.

Q: I got the impression that the lyrical themes are very personal, sometimes dealing about very intimate experiences. Can you tell us a bit more about it?

Timo: This time the lyrics are indeed primarily personal. For example the loss of a person has been evoked (cf. “Farewell”), but there also is a declaration of love from a father to his daughter (cf. “Guardian”) or on another song we complain the principal narrowness of the human capacity for cognition (cf. “Threnody”).

Q: What might we expect from the future considering aspects like new songs, remixes, live performances and maybe other music activities?

Timo: We want to continue to work on our project in the future. A few concerts have already been organized for this year. We hope that it will be even more, because we want to play live again. Everything else will develop during the course of this year.

Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Dark-electro & pop, wave-pop, EBM.

Background/Info: Absurd Minds strikes back after a hiatus of seven years! Stefan Grossmann, Tilo Ladwig, Nick and Timo Fischer are back on track with “Tempus Fugit”, which is the band’s 6^th official album to date.

Content: Absurd Minds rapidly became a successful formation and that’s probably because of their unique sound approach. Time runs by, but the influences and global sound approach of Stefan Grossmann and his acolytes hasn’t changed. Absurd Minds has always reminded me to the bombast and refinement of Project Pitchfork. “Tempus Fugit” is an appropriated title to bring us back to the essence of Absurd Minds.

The songs are still carried by bombastic and sometimes somewhat orchestral sound treatments next to subtle and refined arrangements. There’s a constant duality between powerful parts and dreamy passages. The songs are driven by solid choruses featuring sweet melodies and other easy to remember vocal lines.

A few cuts were accomplished with guitar, which now injects a new-wave touch to the work and then a more psychedelic touch.

+ + + : “Tempus Fugit” not only marks the return of Absurd Minds, but it also is a fully accomplished and diversified opus. This work has it all: powerful cuts with carrying choruses and great melody lines and softer pieces leading you into a dreamy universe. I sometimes get the impression of hearing a hybrid sound between Project Pitchfork and Depeche Mode. “Kreuzfeuer” is a great song in the genre, but I also have to mention the modernism of “For Those Who Love”. Globally speaking this new work sounds in the line of previous albums although I like its diversity and sound production. The synths are absolutely great while Grossmann remains a charismatic singer. Last, but not least I also like the digipak of this album.

– – – : I’m not that fond of the somewhat psychedelic guitar playing (on “Hourglass”), which is quite different from what Absurd Minds are used to composing. I also have a preference for the ‘harder’ cuts although some of the ‘softer’ pieces are real beauties.

Conclusion: You don’t really get the impression Absurd Minds took a break for so many years, but “Tempus Fugit” is a noticeable comeback and one of their best albums to date!

Best songs: “For Those Who Love”, “Kreuzfeuer”, “Now We Hear The Call”, “Threnody”.

Rate: (7½).

Band: www.absurdminds.de / www.facebook.com/AbsurdMinds

Label: www.darkdimensions.de /  www.facebook.com/pages/Dark–Dimensions–Label–Group/486014725206

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Experimental, psychedelic, cinematographic.

Background/Info: The “4 In 1”-series has been created by Alain Neffe during the early 80s. The concept was to bring 4 bands together on 1 record. There’s a serious hiatus between both debut releases and the third one released on EE Tapes in 2012. The newest edition has been released on Alain Neffe’s own label Insane Music and brings 4 bands together.

Bands: M.A.L., Kosmose, Alice Just, BeNe GeSSeRiT.

Content: BeNe GeSSeRiT is a band that doesn’t really need any further introduction. It remains the main and most famous formation Alain Neffe has been involved in. The sound is characterized by a mix of good-old 80s elements and pure experimentalism. I sometimes call it sonic Dadaism.

M.A.L. is a project set up by Daniel Malempre who you maybe know from other projects and especially Human Flesh and Kosmose. The sound remains pretty experimental, but also a bit soundtrack-minded with some psychedelic elements on top.

Kosmose has been featured as well with one single, but with a long duration cut in the purest experimental tradition.

Alice Just is a band I never heard of before and they make their first steps on this cassette. It sounds a bit in the line of some BeNe GeSSeRiT-music so it was not coincidental realizing that Alain Neffe is helping a hand. But Alice Just first of all is a female theatrical voice telling you absurd and somewhat surreal stories in a French poetry style.

+ + + : Insane Music deals with sounds that fashion music lovers have never heard. It’s more than simply experimental music, it sometimes appears to be a kind of childish and somewhat innocent-like music style. I’m not always convinced by the music the label is dealing with, but I highly respect the creation and spirit of Alain Neffe. I’ve a preference for the songs of BeNe GeSSeRiT and M.A.L.

– – – : No doubt about it, this is music for a restricted number of music freaks. This is an antidote to all kind of commercial productions and catchy pop songs. That’s for sure what will make it hard to listen to.

Conclusion: There’s one main point you can’t reproach to Alain Neffe; he’s composing really different music than the masses. He’s a kind of alien moving throughout a music universe that is too often repeating itself and easily jumping on fashion trends.

Best bands: Bene GeSSeRiT, M.A.L.

Rate: (6).

Label: www.facebook.com/Insane–Music–Alain–Neffe-1731327493853451

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Out via the Death Waltz/PentaMusic labels in 2 weeks from now (you can order the vinyl version right here) is another cult classic soundtrack from the video nasty era, namely the soundtrack from Joe D’Amato’s “Absurd” as composed by Italian musician Carlo Maria Cordio. The record’s 22 tracks include the full remastered score as well as cues composed by Cordio for the 1982 splatter movie “Pieces”.

The double vinyl release, the first in a planned series with Italy’s CAM Records, comes in a gatefold sleeve with cover art by Wes Benscoter and embossed intestines. Yep, we are not kidding.

“Absurd” is a follow-up (a ‘non-sequel’ to many though) to “Antropophagus” and became one of 39 titles to be successfully prosecuted under the UK Obscene Publications Acts in 1984. It was released in 1980s in the United States as “Monster Hunter” by Wizard Video.

The plot involves a near invincible man known as Mikos who goes on a killing spree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a4hGNoxRHs

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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