Genre/Influences: Electro-Ambient, IDM, Techno-EBM, Industrial, Cinematic.

Format: Digital, CD.    

Background/Info: Nearly four years after the previous “Hyperakusis”-compilation German Audiophob label unleashed the fourth chapter of the series. Nine bands from the labels have been selected and twelve tracks have been featured.

Artists: Spherical Disrupted, Axiome, Gamlaskatten, Mortaja, Wesenberg, Mandelbrot, Starmen, Autoclav1.1, Darkrad.

Content: This compilation perfectly represents Audiophob’s roster. From Electro-Ambient with Industrial sound treatments to old-school Electronics to powerful Techno-Body to Ambient-Techno to space-like electronics to Cinematic music the bands bring a very diversified menu.

+ + + : Audiophob is a small label but with a great taste of music. Most productions stand for true sound intelligence and a visionary approach. I’m getting once more totally wild of the heavy, bouncing Techno-Body music by Mortaja which is characterized by devastating, solid, bass lines. This artist brings two exceptional cuts. Wesenberg is a more familiar name and still a visionary artist when it comes to Electronic music. He brings a great mixture of techno and Ambient. I also want to mention both debut cuts by Spherical Disrupted remaining one of the label’s flagholders and a great Electro-Industrial project featuring haunting passages. Notice by the way the sampler is only featuring new and exclusive cuts.

– – – : Some artists didn’t feature their best work to date but on the other hand, it’s an opportunity to get something unique.

Conclusion: This work celebrates the 40^th Audiophob release which remains a label devoted to intelligent Electro underground music.

Best bands: Mortaja, Wesenberg, Axiome, Spherical Disrupted.

Rate: 8.

Label: www.audiophob.de / www.facebook.com/audiophob

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

(By Stéphane Froidcoeur for Inferno Sound Diaries/Side-Line Reviews) 2022 has been once again a sad, bloody and terrible year. Living in a mad world music once more remains a true therapy to appease pain and frustration. Concerts and festivals came back; the perfect place to meet friends again. Artists remain prolific releasing great studio work. So I’m once more closing the year by a personal selection of my very own ‘best of’-albums of the year.

Over 700 productions have been selected while 540  reviews have been made all over the year. Some productions have been refused because the style of music didn’t fit, while other reviews will be postponed to 2023. I’m really grateful to all labels, bands and promoters considering my work and efforts and I hope you’ll go on providing me new promos next year.

I one again have to express my deepest gratitude to Rich Bova (NEIKKA RPM) who for years and years now is reading, correcting and improving my reviews. Without Rich there would be no reviews. I also want to thank Bernard Van Isacker – chief redactor Side-Line Music Magazine – for the successful collaboration. 

Up now to 2023. I already reduced my activities this year and will move on reducing it in 2023. I made my first reviews and interviews back in 1991 (!). Some of the readers and artists weren’t even born when I wrote my first review for Side-Line. So after more than 30 years non-stop activities I think it’s not that strange to move on slowly.

I also want to express a big ‘F*** you’ to so-called ‘artists’ and label owners who don’t realise and appreciate the work I’m doing by making reviews and preparing interviews to get them in the spotlights. The attitude and less of respect shown by those people – luckily a very few number – is just unacceptable… but I’m afraid it reflects the world we’re living in… Behind a genius artist is not always hiding a great person… It’s quite strange to realise the ’biggest’- and long-time established artists from this scene often are the most accessible ones.

Writing reviews remains very ‘subjective’ and always a source of discussion, but keep in mind it will be always the perception of the reviewer. I can assure you I’m always trying to argue my reviews the best as possible. A review will be never objective, but has to be honest!

Like every year I’ve made a selection from the best albums of the year. This ‘TOP 25’ covers different styles like EBM, Dark-Electro, IDM, Synth-Pop, Ethereal, Dark-Ambient, Industrial, Cinematographic, Gothic, Post-Punk, Cold/Dark-Wave, Dark-Techno and a few related genres. It remains an exciting but tough exercise.

This ‘TOP 25’ is taken from the promotional material I got while compilations, ‘best of’-productions, EP’s and singles were not considered.

So, here’s my ‘TOP 25’ from 2022 and don’t forget to share it with your friends….

Top 25 albums 2022

1. IVARDENSPHERE: “Ragemaker” – Metropolis Records
2. DIE ROBO SAPIENS : “Robo Sapien Race” – Alfa Matrix
3. EBE04 : “Inrush – Give/Take
4. CALDON GLOVER: “Labyrintia” – Cyclic Law
5. ROME: “Hegemonikon” – Trisol
6. NEIKKA RPM: “Scorpio In The Hourglass – Alfa Matrix
7. VANGUARD: “Spectrum” – Infacted Recordings
8. SUICIDE COMMANDO: “Goddestructor” – Out Of Line
9. ELM: “Penetrator” – Alfa Matrix
10. OBERER TOTPUNKT: “Totentanz” – Danse Macabre Records
11. THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE: “Fascination” – Metropolis Records
12. BLACKBOOK: “Confessions Of The Innocent” – DarkTunes Music Group
13. BEYOND THE GHOST: “Sundown” – Cryo Chamber
14. THEN COMES SILENCE: “Hunger” – Metropolis Records
15. PRINCIPE VALLIENTE: “Barricades” – Metropolis Records
16. DAWN OF ASHES: “Scars Of The Broken” – Artoffact Records
17. MONSTERGOD: “Ozymandias” – Space Race Records
18. STATIQBLOOM: “Threat” – Sonic Groove Records
19. AXIOME: “Field Guide To Alien Planets And Other Disco Balls – Audiophob
20. REICHSFEIND: “Darken” – Alfa Matrix
21. FIRST AID 4 SOULS: “I Am The Night” – Alfa Matrix
22. ORDO ROSARIUS EQUILIBRIO: “Nihilist Notes And The Perputual Quest 4 Meaning In Nothing” – Out Of Line
23. KILL SHELTER: “Asylum” – Manic Depression Records / Metropolis Records
24. JAGATH: “Svapna” – Cold Spring Records
25. KILL YOUR BOYFRIEND: “Voodoo” – Shyrec

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

Belgian duo Cedrik Fermont (Ambre, Dead Hollywood Stars, Črno Klank, Kirdec ao) and Olivier Moreau (Imminent, Ambre ao) set up Axiome in 1991. Both artists and friends got involved in an impressive number of projects, but they regularly move back working on new Axiome stuff. The band explored multiple influences and music genres, but the last albums became more sophisticated, mixing elements of IDM, Acid and Minimal-Electro. The new album “Field Guide To Alien Planets And Other Disco Balls” released on Audiophob is an intelligent piece of modern underground Electro. This album deserves a bit more information which was given by both protagonists.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Getting back to the early work of Axiome (more than 30 years ago now) and listening afterwards to your new album I honestly didn’t get the impression listening to the same project. What has made this radical evolution and what remains from the early Axiome anno 1991?

Axiome: It’s perhaps not a radical evolution, we had more than three decades to reach that point. Unlike some artists we never got stuck in one music genre, if one listens to all of our releases it is easy to see that we have always been evolving and changing: we played Industrial, Power-Noise, Glitch, Breakcore, Acid and Electro. We sometimes went with the flow, like when we played Breakcore, we wanted to bring something new in the Power-Noise and Industrial music scene that has sometimes a hard time to renew itself. We both lived in Belgium back then and the Breakcore scene was huge in there, the audience was also very different, more related to the club scene but also the Punk scene too and we loved that energy, we were booked to play for Breakcore Gives Me Wood or for the Maschinenfest scenes that brought very different listeners, which was interesting to see but we are also both fan of Electro and related genres, we partly grew up with Punk and Post-Punk, EBM, New-Beat and Acid and also with Noise, Experimental and Industrial music, I presume all this imprinted us.

What remains from the early times is probably that fact that we like to try new things and as a duo have our own personality.

You know, what shaped our first tape recordings around 1990/1991 was not only our music tastes but also our inexperience and lack of money to buy better gears.

Q: You guys have been involved with numerous projects so what makes Axiome different from the rest and what’s the main focus when working together as Axiome?

Axiome: Axiome is the oldest active ‘band’ we are involved with and maybe with one exception, we always meet to compose, we don’t exchange files for working remotely. Which is not always the case with some of our other projects.

The main focus is perhaps enjoying time composing together, having breaks to listen to music we like and eating good food.

Q: One thing is for sure, the title of the new album sounds totally weird. Is there a deeper- and maybe metaphoric significance behind or is it just your sense of humor?

Axiome: It’s just humor, you can see it in many of our other releases. Humor is often lacking in the Industrial, EBM or Electro circles and we both like humor. We both grew up in Belgium, a surreal place that is not afraid of making fun of itself, isn’t it ?

You’ve got all these Electro artists embracing sci-fi topics, often dystopian ones but the world can be hilarious too… No alien ever attacked us so far, the problems astronautics has to deal with are Moonwalkers crapping their pants and clogged toilets on the space station. Here are some of the real space quest’s dramas. Can you imagine how it’s going to be on Mars? Settlers walking with diapers, humanity reborn! Ah ah!

Q: Sound-wise I experience “Field Guide To Alien Planets And Other Disco Balls” as totally ‘free-style’. Multiple influences have been mixed together without compromises. How did the writing process happened and did you handle specific references and/or guideline?

Axiome: We never write down ideas and concepts or music notation, here again, we go with the flow. Trial and errors. We might have a vague idea in mind but the end result is often different from the original idea if we had one. There’s no fixed goal.

We sit behind the computer and try to compose a looped rhythm, once we think it sounds good, we add sounds and synthesizers and perhaps other beats and then nowadays voices too.

The only concept that we have are the provisory titles which are often connected to vegetable names, so when we compose an album, each track is connected to a vegetable or fruit belonging to the same family. Sorry if we ruined all our fans’ fantasies.

Q: One of the influences running through your latest works is Acid music which is not exactly often used and mixed with Industrial- and related music genres. What does Acid music evoke to you and the famous Acid scene from Chicago, Detroit ao?

Cedrik : I think Olivier is more acquainted with Acid music than me. I listen to some of it, mostly old stuff, not only the US scene, I like some of the productions a lot but never dove deeply into what has been done or is still being produced. I must tell you that I don’t consider AXIOME to be an Industrial band, we have been one but what we do now is pretty different and doesn’t correspond to how I see Industrial music. Acid is related to Dance music and clubs and what we do is some kind of perhaps mutant version of Dance and Club music.

We thought I’d be interesting to incorporate such influence into something else than Techno. In fact other artists have been incorporating 303 sounds with Ambient or Industrial music for a long time now, it’s nothing new.

Q: What makes the chemistry between both of you and how do you expect AXIOME evolving after more than 30 years?

Axiome: We met when we were two years old, going to the same kindergarten (no kidding !) and even if we now live 700 km apart from each other, we usually see each other several times per year to compose music and music-wise, we still have a lot in common.

We never exactly know how Axiome will evolve, we sometimes have a plan but without guarantee that it won’t change. We wanted to make some Detroit inspired Electro and now, check our latest two albums “Who Will Control Us?” and “Field Guide To Alien Planets And Other Disco Balls”, the result doesn’t exactly fit that box.

As many events that occurred in the past three years have proven it, humanity’s future is unpredictable, so is Axiome too. A next album could be Hip-Hop or Ambient or else, this is what makes us interesting, we hope, there’s no rule.

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: IDM, Acid.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Belgian Axiome duo strikes back with a new album which is their first one released by Audiophob. Active since 1990/1991, good-old mates Olivier Moreau (Imminent, Urawa ao) and C-Drik Fermont (Kirdec, Tetra Plok, Ambre ao) have released the main part of their work on Ant-Zen.

Content: This work sounds like the offspring between different influences. Broken beats have been mixed with retro-strings, numerous effects, Acid sequences and pitched vocals. The work sounds diversified although there’s a true cohesion between the songs.

+ + + : I already heard great works from this duo but I’m impressed the way they evolved in sound throughout the years. It’s fascinating to see how pure vintage/analogue-like sounds and effects have this magic to become refreshing and even visionary. This album sounds a bit minimal but is mainly characterized by impressive sound treatments and terrific retro strings. The vocals often sound like samples but first of all create a robotic, ghost-like sensation. The broken beats get the production ultra-danceable. I definitely like the Acid sequences which are mainly emerging at the final part of the work. The album reveals a succession of great cuts but the masterpiece is “The Dentist”.

– – – : The very last track which is also the longest one is the single track that couldn’t totally convince me. I think there’s no reason to complain!

Conclusion: Axiome is getting better and better with this new album being a sublime and totally accomplished piece of modern and intelligent Electronics.

Best songs: “The Dentist”, “Enemies Or Foes?”, “Forsaken”, “Gala On The Moon”, “Planetarium”, “Superfluid”.

Rate: 9.

Artist: http://syrphe.com/axiome.html /  www.facebook.com/Axiome.duo

Label: www.audiophob.de / www.facebook.com/audiophob

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

I recently made an interview about the Iranian industrial- & ambient scene, which I think was an interesting and informative read. It give me the idea to get in touch with Cedrik Fermont who I had the opportunity to meet years ago now in Belgium. I’ve been fascinated by this artist’s quest and efforts to discover unknown underground scenes in the most unexpected countries on earth. This is a real informative and fascinating read, which I highly recommend… and don’t hesitate to share with other music lovers.

(by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: For all of those who are not familiar with you, can you please briefly introduce yourself by evoking the main facts of your career and projects you’ve been involved with?

C-drik: I’m a composer, musician, label manager, radio host, author, concert organiser from the DR Congo who mostly grew up in Belgium, now based in Berlin. I’ve been involved in the noise, industrial and alternative electronic scene since 1989 with projects like Crno Klank, Axiome, Ambre, Tetra Plok, Tasjiil Moujahed, Moonsanto to name a few. Labels such as Ant-Zen, Ad Noiseam, Hushush to speak about the main ones have published some of my records.

I run Syrphe which is not only a label but what I call a platform that publishes mostly CD’s and that I use to host a radio show, organise concerts and sometimes music documentary films screenings and now and then publish news on a blog/magazine. Syrphe’s main but not exclusive focus is to promote artists from Asia and Africa and at a lower extend from Latin America who compose so-called experimental music, electronica, noise, ambient, free improv, industrial and so on.

Q: Years ago now you got interested in electro/industrial/noise music from ‘other’ countries and places on earth. How did you get in touch with these scenes and what are the main differences with the familiar European- and American scenes?

C-drik: It started in the late 1980s. I took part of the DIY tape network and could not believe there were only artists in Western Europe, North America and Australia involved in this scene. So while swapping tapes, I started to print and spread some flyers explaining I was looking for electronic, noise, industrial and experimental artists all over the planet. I slowly got in touch with people in Brazil (Cri Du Chat Disques, Simbolo), in South Africa (Network 77, Sphinx), in Japan (K2, Yximalloo, etc.) and also discovered more from the Polish, Czechoslovak, East German, Yugoslavian and Soviet scenes that were also a bit out of the usual circuit due to the political problems between the so-called East and West and in many of those countries, repression and censorship too.

I then published a cassette in 1996 that included various artists from South Africa, Chile, Brazil, Malta, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Belgium, Australia, and so on – 25 countries in total. That was quite an achievement for me back then without the internet. Nevertheless many people were still convinced that I would find nothing in many Asian and African countries so as soon as I got the opportunity, I started to travel and contact local people to perform.

Thanks to the internet it became easier, in particular thanks to some forums, newsgroups and peer-to-peer networks like Soulseek, some of those internet platforms’ members were from China or Thailand for example. In 2003, I played in Istanbul and met some artists there and came back with a few tapes and CDr’s. In 2004, I performed in Bangkok and in January 2005 I started a six months tour in Laos, Vietnam, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, I performed at all sorts of events from harsh noise to breakcore parties, industrial, crust punk, grindcore and came back with about 70 CD’s, cassettes and vinyls, I had a definitive proof that there where things happening there; I then continued to tour in many other countries like Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Macau, Myanmar, India and so on to perform, archive, meet local artists and organisers and since 2007 I published various compilations that include artists from those countries, the last one coming along with our book “Not Your World Music: Noise In South East Asia”.

I think that there are more similarities than differences to be found, nonetheless in the case of Indonesia for example, people are not afraid to mix various scenes at an event: you may easily find some industrial, breakcore, punk, harsh noise and indie rock bands all performing one night at the same venue, it used to be so in Singapore and Malaysia too in the past. Another example that I find interesting is the case of China where more than once it happen that some people came to me to tell that they had never heard such music before, they came out of curiosity seeing a foreigner was playing and they usually didn’t run away, they tried to understand what I did and maybe why I did it, they are not jaded or totally closed-minded such as too many people can be in some other parts of the world.

Another difference is that while some scenes can be incredibly active, like the noise scene in Indonesia, some other scenes are almost non-existent: EBM and electro (I speak about the Detroit techno style) have never been widespread outside of Europe, the Americas and Australia. You can or could only find a handful of them in Japan, South Africa, China and Israel, even though it’s not totally unknown to other parts of Asia above all, culturally speaking, EBM and electro seem to really belong to a certain ‘Western’ identity, I can’t explain why.
In South East Asia, besides noise music, punk, grindcore, noisegrind and metal are incredibly active scenes too, I really think and I’m not the only one, that the most vivid punk and related genres scene on Earth is in Indonesia.

Q: I knew there was an underground scene in some Asian countries, but what about Africa?

C-drik: For Africa, I often see it divided in two very distinct parts: the North African scene in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and in a much smaller scale Algeria which are all interconnected countries, also together with Asian neighbours like Palestine, Lebanon and a few other Middle Eastern countries due to their common roots (languages and culture, religion). And the second part, the Sub-Saharan one which is not a especially a united part due to the size of the continent, variety of cultures and scarcity of musicians and composers in the field of underground electronic and experimental music.

So you can find artists in major cities like Casablanca, Rabat, Tunis, Alexandria, Cairo, Algiers I the North. The proximity of Europe, the continuous contact with the ex-colonisers and as previously mentioned, the contact with other Arab countries and the slightly better living standard level makes it easier for a scene to emerge. As for the rest of Africa, there are only few artists, often from the middle or upper class who are active with the exception of South Africa that has a very different context, partly due to the past apartheid time. That doesn’t mean that electronic music doesn’t exist at a large scale in Africa but it’s often more mainstream or closer to a certain tradition and then mostly not connected to experimental or industrial for example.

You can of course find many genres such as kuduro, kwaito, hip hop, shangaan electro, psy trance, etc. And as early as the 1970’s artists like Francis Bebey in Cameroon, William Onyeabor in Nigeria, Mammane Sanni Abdoulaye in Niger already performed some amazing electronic music, afro-beat for one; electro-funk, disco for another, minimal electronic for the latest, you can find a small goth/EBM scene in South Africa, there was ten years ago Syndrome-Corps, a dark-wave band in Senegal, in Cameroon today, Elsa M’bala also composes ambient, electronica mixed with field recordings, Kwerk in Mauritius composes some nice electronica too and a few artists from the Réunion island do play dark-wave or avant-garde/collage – some leave abroad by now as their future is not always very bright over there.

It has to be said that one of the pioneers of experimental and electro-acoustic music comes from Egypt: Halim El-Dabh composed his first piece already in 1944, four years before Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète.

Q: When we are talking about a ‘scene’ I’m still thinking of labels, magazines, radio broadcastings, festivals, clubs, promoters etc… Is it a common element everywhere?

C-drik: When there is a scene, yes of course, but in some cities or countries there are just a handle of people here and there like in Cameroon, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Iraq, etc., so I would not call it a scene. In countries like China, Indonesia, Lebanon (in Beirut, mostly), Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong or Egypt for example, we can speak about a scene. In those places, you’ll find one or more festivals dedicated to sound art, noise, free improv, audio-visual art and so on, regular promoters, some (or a lot) of venues, sometimes radio stations, fanzines, workshops, labels. Public (sometimes private) school, academies or universities also provide electro-acoustic, electronic and experimental music courses in China, South Korea, Japan, South Africa, Malaysia, Taiwan (…).

Sometimes the scene can be international, this is the case of Border Movement, a network that interconnect artists from the local independent scenes in Dhaka, Kabul, Lahore, Karachi, Pune, Colombo, New Delhi and so on from hip hop to electronica, techno, ambient and even experimental music.

Q: I can imagine there’s a link between underground music and the political regime of a country; I mean that some artists living in a totalitarian-minded regime are taking serious risks by dealing with this kind of music. What is it all about and what about censorship in some countries?

C-drik: Indeed this kind of music and other genres such as hip hop, punk, metal, oi or grindcore may be restricted, put under scrutiny or simply forbidden in some places but no need to go so far, not so long ago did England forbid parties (hear: raves) with repetitive beat (The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) for example and mainstream media in the West who are promoting only commercial idiotic music are somehow censoring other artists too.

It is obvious that during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for example, any musician could be jailed, beaten up or killed, religious extremists in some countries do their best to ban alternative music events, Myanmar (Burma) until a few years ago banned music containing western influences, hence some musicians especially in the field of punk and hip hop as they can be political have been jailed, the same apply with Iran, Vietnam is still very suspicious regarding ‘modern’ music and art in general but in those last three countries, the situation has very well improved now, Nepal has during a long time also forbidden Western-influenced music.

Nevertheless, the list is very long, including censorship in the Western world, I would invite you to visit http://freemuse.org/ to get a better idea.

Q: I’ve in mind there’s no real trace of underground music in extremely poor countries like Burundi, Burkina Faso, Liberia… or is it maybe for a very restricted number of people like the elite?

C-drik: In some countries, not only those you mention, it is obviously an elite (upper class or middle class people when there is a middle class), in Burkina Faso, you can find the Afro-electro-pop band Burkina Electric, in Nigeria apart of aforementioned William Onyeabor who composed in the 1970s and 1980s, you can currently find audio-visual and sound artist Emeka Ogboh, in Angola, Victor Gama (who moved to Europe).

In extremely poor countries, people’s priority is obviously not often to try to experiment with sound (let’s put aside the technological aspect as one needs above all imagination, not technology to create experimental or new music) but I suspect that we are finding a small amount  of them because it is not well documented in most parts of Africa. Some friends who travelled a lot in Africa or lived in some western African countries heard some people experimenting in the street with tape for example but if nothing is archived and spread, only those who bump, sometimes by accident, on those artists can speak about them. A lot of work has still to be done to discover more from Africa.

Also, I realised that in some other parts of the world and this concerns many African countries, living under dictatorship or deep social inequality, the underground tends to be political and musically more accessible to reach a larger audience and gain more support, hence you can find a lot of hip hop, in some countries radical movement may emerge too like political death metal in Angola and Mozambique or a small punk and goth scene in Kenya, punk in South Africa has also always been political, since the 1970’s.

Q: In your recently published book “Not Your World Music / Noise In South-East Asia” you tried to explain what noise-music is all about. I’ve been always interested in the question: ‘is noise really music or is music not the result of noises’ and what do you think about some pioneers in industrial music talking about ‘anti-music’?

C-drik: Noise pleases my ears and emotionally attracts me hence it is music to me and it is intentionally produced to be listened to. Of course, it is hard to stick to one definition. If we stick to a simple definition of music: the art of assembling sounds, then noise music is music and not anti-music, to me, noise doesn’t destroy the concept of music, it is in any case a very subjective concept; in some societies, noises included in the music composition have never been seen as problematic while Western classical music until the late 19th century maybe sounded like a quest for purity and perfection – meanwhile, noises have been included in many compositions from Russolo to Stockhausen for example. I don’t agree with the anti-music concept, I’d rather call it anti-mainstream, above all since noise and industrial music became well established genres. I see the same problematic regarding anti-art, dada and all those who tried to break the rules of art ended up creating an art movement voluntary or not.

Q: I’ve been impressed by your book, which is something unique characterized by an impressive research and knowledge. What’s the background of this book?

C-drik: It is partly the result of a frustration and partly the result of many years of exploration, research, travels and discussions. It is a collaboration and this is an important fact about that book, it would neither exist without the work of Dimitri della Faille, nor would it exist without my part and the one of the people who met and interviewed.

I think that all my researches, travels, explorations, publications and releases about Asian and Africa come from the fact that I am tired to always hear the same non-sense: ‘There’s nothing there’ or ‘We – the West – invented everything before them’ or ‘They just copy music from the West’, etc. It also comes from a questions I often asked myself while I was a teenager and young adult: ‘Why am I one of the few Africans in this scene?’.

Dimitri and I with whom I co-wrote the book thought that we had to write it to finally have a real archive of South East Asian noise and experimental music as very very little has been written about it and nothing at such scale and we think we both had enough knowledge to make it happen and we are among the few persons who explored this region almost entirely, even though we don’t originate from there. It is also made to be a starting point; thanks to this book, we received many comments, mostly positive, not always – the book is not perfect, it is a first step and we hope it will push more local artists and organisers to speak about the scene(s), to write and archive or collaborate with each others as even between some of those countries, communication can be scarce or limited, now there is “Not Your World Music: Noise In South East Asia” and there is a database on Syrphe for many years, two important pillars I think.

Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries

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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