Out now is the brand new video “El fin de la humanidad” (The end of humanity) by the Colombian electro-industrial producer Hypervuur. The video was directed by David Carrizales.

Hypervuur mixes influences of 1990’s rave and horror movies in his electro-industrial work. So far Hypervuur released 7 albums. “El fin de la humanidad” is the first single of his “Realpolitik” album. “The song mocks how Western culture is influenced by Christianity in such a way that we’re not only looking for our savior to come, but also for the apocalypse that will end us once and for all, be it through war, a pandemic, AIDS, or the Y2K bug.”

About the video Hypervuur says: “This music video follows an experimental approach that began without any clue of where it would take us. As if wandering through a thick jungle where you can only see what’s 10 cm in front of you as you hack your way through with a machete. A desire to let go of all plans and instead let the process guide us through on a psychedelic, expressive and tactile trip. Following the leitmotiv of the song, we portrayed Hypervuur as humanity himself, showing him chained, blindfolded, or wrapped in a straitjacket to visualize the effects of this relentless propaganda machine. We added layers and layers of visual noise that underlined the lyrics and stressed the general discomfort, from motion graphics to traditional animation to VHS effects. Everything was permitted.”

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.

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Diamanda Galás announces the remastered release of “Saint of the Pit” on 13 September 2024 via Intravenal Sound Operations. This fifth studio album, originally released in November 1986, is the second part of her trilogy “The Masque of the Red Death.” The remastering was done by Heba Kadry.

“Saint of the Pit” was created during the HIV-AIDS epidemic and reflects themes of suffering and passion. The album includes compositions based on poems by Charles Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, and Tristan Corbière.

Galás began addressing HIV-AIDS in her work in 1984, with “Saint of the Pit” dedicated to her brother, Philip-Dimitri Galás, who died in 1986. The album was produced with the help of Gareth Jones and includes contributions from musicians like FM Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten.

Here’s the video for “Cris d’Aveugle” (Blind Man’s Cry), a symphonic treatment of Corbière’s poem, about suffering and exclusion.

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.

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(Photo by Pere Masramon) Diamanda Galás has announced details of her latest live release, “Diamanda Galás in Concert”, featuring recordings taken from performances at Thalia Hall in Chicago, and Neptune Theatre in Seattle from 2017. The album is set for release on 14 June 2024 via Intravenal Sound Operations.

Out now is the album’s “A Soul That’s Been Abused“- her take on Ronnie Earl’s soul ballad.

Talking about the track, she explains: “I had a gentleman caller off and on for ten years. Quite often I had to put him on the shelf because he was quite dramatic. But I loved him because usually he could take my sense of humor and colorful language by laughing at me. There was one day when I insulted him badly; and he informed me immediately that he could kill me where I stood. After the drama, we went to sleep. The next morning I went looking for my scissors and couldn’t find them. I looked for my knives and could find not even one. Finally I thought, “He hid them while I was sleeping!” I lifted the mattress and there was a petty arsenal of kitchen knives, scissors, my stun gun, my 38 special, and maybe even a toenail clipper! I laughed so hard that day! And we had a great dinner that night. A Soul That’s Been Abused was always his song.”

Diamanda Galás is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and visual artist. Her work concentrates on themes such as AIDS, mental illness, despair, loss of dignity, political injustice, historical revisionism, and war crimes. Galás’s recordings have also included collaborations, some of which are with the bands Recoil and Erasure, instrumentalist Barry Adamson, and musician Can Oral (also known as Khan), among 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.

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Eighties techno-pop band Vivabeat announced today that it will release remastered reissues of much of their back catalog via 80s-centric Rubellan Remasters on March 1. Founding members Marina Muhlfriedel (Marina del Rey) and Mick Muhlfriedel spearheaded the projects using material they found on some lost tape masters.

Vivabeat’s debut album “Party in the War Zone” comes with ten bonus tracks dating from the years after the original release. “The House is Burning” comes as a limited edition, purple and blue colored-vinyl, best-of package, which includes four previously unreleased songs.

“We never stopped believing in the music we made back then, and when a Vivabeat fan reached out on social media last year, urging us to connect with Rubellan Remasters’ founder Scott Davies, we did,” says Vivabeat keyboard player and vocalist Marina Muhlfriedel. “Scott was enthusiastic about working together, and seeing these projects get a second chance 40 years on is a remarkable gift.”

“After transferring the tapes to a digital format, I remixed two of the songs, one with the support of legendary producer Earle Mankey,” says bass player and lead songwriter Mick Muhlfriedel. “Then, Scott Davies’ expert remastering really breathed new life into the tracks.”

The CD and vinyl reissues serve as tribute to Terrance Robay, Connie DiSilva, and Alec Murphy, who died of AIDS, and to Doug Orilio, who succumbed to complications years after a motorcycle accident that left him as a paraplegic. Of the later members, guitarist Rob Dean, guitarist Jeff Gilbert (who also passed away), and drummer Chris Schendel figure most prominently in these recordings.

About Vivabeat

Vivabeat was formed in L.A. in 1978 as a hybrid of Los Angeles and Boston musicians playing in local punk/new wave bands and was active until the mid-1980s. Marina Muhlfriedel founded the seminal LA punk/pop band Backstage Pass; drummer Doug Orilio was in Boston’s Reddy Teddy, and Mick Muhlfriedel and Alec Murphy played with various Boston bands. When he joined the band, lead singer Terrance Robay was fresh off playing James Dean on the London stage. Connie DiSilva was a prodigy synth player and radio DJ.

Their debut album, “Party in the War Zone”, included the group’s most successful song, “Man from China” — a tune that first captured Peter Gabriel and Charisma Record’s attention.

The band continued to record, including an eponymously titled EP featuring Earle Mankey’s production and former Japan/Gary Numan/Sinead O’Connor guitarist, Rob Dean. It featured the song “The House is Burning (But There’s No One Home)”, which appears in the movie “Body Double” and has recently been licensed for Amazon Prime’s new animated series, “The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy”.

By 1982, Vivabeat found its footing alongside mainstream New Wave bands and spent a few years touring and playing shows with B-52s, Depeche Mode, Gang of Four, Human League, The Thompson Twins, R.E.M., Gary Numan, Wall of Voodoo, and others.

In 2001, Permanent Press Records released a best-of Vivabeat album titled “The Good Life 1979 – 1986”, which also featured tracks from See Jane Run, a Vivabeat spin-off band.

Marina is currently a writer living in Los Angeles. She occasionally performs with a Backstage Pass reboot and hosts Our Lips Unsealed, a rock and roll storytelling show. Mick is the president of a large youth soccer non-profit, the Downtown L.A. Soccer Club, and is working on a second album with his experimental Buff Roshi project.

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.

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Out on June 10th is the remastered 1986 classic album “The Divine Punishment” by Diamanda Galás. Released via Galás’s own label Intravenal Sound Operations it will be available on CD and digitally, with the vinyl version to be released later in 2022. The release was remastered by mastering engineer Heba Kadry working from the original mixes by London-based producer/composer Dave Hunt.

The first album in her ‘Masque of the Red Death’ trilogy, The Divine Punishment was a response to the AIDS epidemic, and a milestone in Diamanda Galás’s artistry and activism. On 30 June 1986, the same day that Diamanda Galás’s “The Divine Punishment” was released, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Georgia’s so-called sodomy law in Bowers v. Hardwick, criminalising consensual sex between men. At the time, about 15,000 people were known to have died of AIDS in the U.S. alone, with little government acknowledgement besides suggestions to quarantine homosexuals on island colonies. By the end of 2021, the number of AIDS deaths globally would exceed 36 million.

Listen to “This Is The Law Of The Plague” right 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.

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Out on May 6th via Cold Spring is the Genesis P-Orridge & Dave Ball OST release “Imagining October”.

The official soundtrack to Derek Jarman’s 1984 short film “Imagining October”, with music recorded by Derek’s friend and collaborator Genesis P-Orridge (Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle), and Dave Ball (Soft Cell, The Grid) will be released on limited edition 12″ vinyl. The material was recorded at the DJM recording studios in Theobalds Road, London.

The vinyl features an etched B-side and includes liner notes by James Mackay (Jarman’s producer, collaborator and archivist).

The track-listing is as follows:

1. Imagining October I
2. Imagining October II
3. Imagining October III
4. Imagining October IV

Derek Jarman put together a program of films for the London Film Festival, reflecting the cutting edge of the London avant-garde of the time. Recorded at the same time as “The Angelic Conversation”, “Imagining October” was filmed in the Eisenstein Museum in Moscow, Vladimir Mayakovsky’s grave at Novodevichy Cemetery, the GUM department store facing red square, and the fire temples of Baku in Azerbaijan. The painting sequences with a group of soldiers (Angus Cook, Stephen Thrower, Peter Doig and Keir Wahid) was filmed in London. Jarman considered it one of the best, if not the best, of his shorter works. It was intended as an agit-prop work.

About Derek Jarman

Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994) was an English film director, stage designer, author and gay rights activist. He was outspoken about his personal struggle with AIDS. On 22 December 1986, Jarman was diagnosed as HIV positive and discussed his condition in public. His illness prompted him to move to Prospect Cottage, Dungeness in Kent, near the nuclear power station. In 1994, he died of an AIDS-related illness in London, aged just 52.

Although he made a long list of feature films and short films, you will know him best for the the following videos he also directed:

• The Sex Pistols – “The Sex Pistols Number One” (1976)
• Throbbing Gristle – “TG Psychic Rally in Heaven” (1981)
• Marc Almond – “Tenderness Is a Weakness” (1984)
• Bryan Ferry – “Windswept” (1985)
• The Smiths – “The Queen Is Dead”, a short film incorporating the Smiths songs “The Queen Is Dead”, “Panic” and “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” (1986). The “Panic” sequence from The Queen Is Dead was edited to form the video for that single (1986).
• The Smiths – “Ask” (1986)
• Pet Shop Boys – “It’s a Sin” (1987)
• Pet Shop Boys – “Rent” (1987)
• Pet Shop Boys – several concert projections (released as “Projections” in 1993)
• Pet Shop Boys – “Violence” (1995)
• Suede: “The Next Life” (1993)

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.

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Now this is good news. All Vond albums are now available on digital platforms worldwide. The release happens in collaboration with Plastic Head Media, which has made all 4 Vond albums available.

Vond was a side project of Håvard Ellefsen of Mortiis and is considered to be the ‘dark side’ of Mortiis, so to speak. On the debut album, “Selvmord”, the musical styles of Vond were quite similar to the music found on early Era 1 Mortiis. On “The Dark River” album however samplers were added together with a different melody structure. The final album “Green Eyed Demon” features an abundance of samples from movies such as “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “Deranged”, accompanied by a droning music line.

Next to these 3 full albums, a “AIDS to the people” will also be released as a download. The record was supposed to be released in 1996, however it took 21 years before the LP would see a release.

Below are the albums 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.

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Today is World AIDS Day, it is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died. World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day, held for the first time in 1988.

Today is the perfect day to remember a special live version of Yazoo’s “Mr. Blue” by René Klijn. Klijn was a member of the boyband Bam-to-Bam-Bam. He died September 5, 1993 in Amsterdam from AIDS-related complications. In 1992 he performed the Yazoo cover “Mr Blue” on Dutch Television, clearly suffering from the ravage AIDS had caused. This was his first performance at dutch television, after this show Rene entered the charts with this song. But within 1 year after this show he died because of aids.

Here’s René Klijn (1962-1993) in the TV-show ‘de Schreeuw van de Leeuw’ on 28 november 1992.

https://youtu.be/fuWGzpkyurY

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.

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