Einstürzende Neubauten’s debut studio album, “Kollaps,” turns 45 this year. The German industrial band released the record on 5 October 1981 through the Hamburg label ZickZack. It remains the first official full-length release by Blixa Bargeld, N.U. Unruh and F.M. Einheit under the Einstürzende Neubauten name.

“Kollaps” runs 38 minutes across eleven tracks, recorded in Berlin in 1981 and produced by the band itself. The album mixes rough punk-derived song structures with noise generated from self-built devices, electronics and metal plates and other found objects, a method that became the band’s signature. The tracklist includes “Tanz Debil,” “Steh auf Berlin,” “Negativ Nein,” “U-Haft Muzak,” “Draußen ist Feindlich,” “Schmerzen Hören (Hören mit Schmerzen),” “Jet’M” (a cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je t’aime… moi non plus”), the title track “Kollaps,” “Sehnsucht,” “Vorm Krieg” and “Hirnsäge.” Later CD reissues appended additional tracks, including a live 1987 recording of “Negativ Nein.”

Trouser Press described the record as “one of the most shocking visions ever committed to vinyl.” “Kollaps” is also listed in the reference book “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.” The album has since been reissued, including a 2002 edition paired with the 1982 dub companion “Stahldubversions.”

About Einstürzende Neubauten

Einstürzende Neubauten formed in Berlin in 1980 around vocalist and guitarist Blixa Bargeld and percussionist N.U. Unruh. The band’s name translates to “collapsing new buildings,” a reference to construction failures in West Berlin at the time. From the outset, the group built its sound around self-made and adapted instruments, including power tools, scrap metal, oil drums and construction debris, played alongside conventional guitar, bass and vocals. F.M. Einheit joined on percussion before the band’s first LP.

The band’s earliest recorded appearance came via the cassette-only “Stahlmusik” in 1980. Einstürzende Neubauten signed to the Hamburg independent label ZickZack, which released “Kollaps” on 5 October 1981, the band’s first official studio album. The record was recorded in Berlin during 1981 and produced by the band itself, with no outside producer credited.

Following “Kollaps,” Einstürzende Neubauten continued to record for European independent labels through the 1980s, including “Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T.” (1983) and the compilation “Strategies Against Architecture ’80-’83,” before moving to Some Bizzare/Mute for later releases. Bargeld also worked as a guitarist with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from the band’s formation in 1983. Einstürzende Neubauten’s lineup has changed over four decades, with Alexander Hacke and Marc Chung both joining in the years following “Kollaps.” The band added bassist Josefine Lukschy in 2026, alongside confirmed festival dates and studio webcasts. Forty-five years after “Kollaps” introduced the band’s self-made-instrument method on record, Einstürzende Neubauten remains active, with the album standing as the starting point of that catalogue.

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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Einstürzende Neubauten have introduced Josefine Lukschy as their new bass player. Josefine Lukschy was chosen several months ago through two rounds of try outs. Lukschy is already rehearsing with the band ahead of the upcoming shows.

The band’s official live page currently lists 11 confirmed 2026 festival dates, starting on April 6 at BRDCST in Brussels. More 2026 dates are still in the works.

Einstürzende Neubauten live dates 2026

• April 6 – Brussels – BRDCST
• April 10 – Nantes – Variationes
• April 12 – Den Haag – Rewire Festival
• May 22-25 – Leipzig – Wave Gotik Treffen
• June 3 – Trento – SanbàPolis
• June 5 – Barcelona – Primavera Sound
• June 17 – Thessaloniki – Moni Lazariston
• July 9 – Wiltz – Festival de Wiltz
• July 19 – Plovdiv – Phillgood Festival
• August 8 – Katowice – OFF Festival
• August 11 – Uppsala – Parksnäckan

About Einstürzende Neubauten

Einstürzende Neubauten formed in West Berlin on April 1, 1980. The original line-up included Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Gudrun Gut and Beate Bartel. The group emerged from the West Berlin underground and built its early identity around scrap metal, found objects and custom-made instruments.

Their debut album “Kollaps” followed in November 1981 followed by releases such as “Kollaps”, “Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T.”, “Halber Mensch”, “Haus der Lüge”, “Tabula Rasa” and “Ende Neu” across the ZickZack, Some Bizzare and Mute years.

Around the early 2000s, the band moved part of its activity into its supporter-driven online model, an internet-based independent production platform. Later studio releases included “Silence Is Sexy” in 2000, “Perpetuum Mobile” in 2004, “Alles wieder offen” in 2007, “Lament” in 2014, “Alles in Allem” in 2020 and “Rampen (apm: alien pop music)” in 2024.

The current line-up now includes Bargeld, Unruh, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser and Josefine Lukschy. Alexander Hacke announced his departure in April 2025.

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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Today we can offer you the exclusive full album stream of the new album by Killer Couture, “Everything Is Normal”. Killer Couture is an industrial band founded and based in Sacramento, CA. Though starting from influences such as Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Einstürzende Neubauten, and more, Killer Couture have fused synthesizers and sampling, scrap metal and drum machines, and guitars, to create an own sound.

You can check out “Everything Is Normal” right below and order it on Bandcamp. The album will be officially out on October 31st.

“Everything Is Normal”’s themes largely stem from the frustrations of the political upheaval of the time as well as mental health issues being exacerbated by quarantine. “The album challenges that there ever was a status quo to begin with. It also addresses the people who feel the need to try and uphold the illusion, and the psychic maelstrom of living in the true chaotic reality beneath the mask.”

About Killer Couture

The band formed in 2016 and started to perform live using of metal and power tools as instruments. In 2018, they self-released their first album “God Forgive The Children”, followed by 2019’s “What’s Left?”.

After the pandemic in 2020, unable to perform or write together, and post-departure of their third member, Killer Couture was forced to find a new way to survive. Writing music separately throughout the pandemic, the remaining duo (and original lineup) of Set Draven and Elliott Petrella were finally able to begin merging their ideas.

As soon as it was safe, with Set coming to San Francisco from Sacramento across several weekends, they began writing, editing, and tracking the demos for what would take shape as Everything Is Normal.

This is the first album to feature Elliott’s guitar-playing and songwriting skills, and also their first album to be mixed and recorded non-independently by Set, but instead, working with the post-punk and metal producer (and musician in his own right) Pat Hills, of Sacramento’s EarthTone Studios. It was through Pat that they came into contact with the Bay Area’s independent label Transylvanian Recordings. Read the review of ‘Everything Is Normal’.

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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Berlin’s avant-garde industrial band Lolita Terrorist Sounds has unveiled a new collaborative art-video with Berlin Wall artist Kiddy Citny. The collaboration, an art-video for the track “Living-in-glory”, merges Citny’s live painting performance with the experimental sound of the band.

Kiddy Citny, whose 3.6-meter-high painted heads on the Berlin Wall became iconic in 1985, joined forces with the band after a chance meeting in a Berlin train station last year. “This video is the visual translation of our most experimental track,” said band leader Maurizio Vitale. “It was captured in Kiddy’s Berlin atelier.”

“Living-in-glory” is the closing track from the debut album “St. Lola”. It combines meditative drone music, ASMR, and industrial sounds, recorded in an unconventional studio on Dresdener Strasse, once part of the Berlin Wall strip. Field recordings from the former East German secret service building also feature prominently in the piece.

Kiddy Citny expressed his admiration for the collaboration: “Creating this piece with Lolita Terrorist Sounds was an inspiring process. The sound and historical context gave my painting an exceptional energy.”

You can view the art-video below.

Lolita Terrorist Sounds / Kiddy Citny European Tour

Following this collaboration, Lolita Terrorist Sounds will embark on a European tour, performing in Berlin, Poznań, Warsaw, and Prague this October. Joining the line-up is drummer Kian Kiesling.

• Berlin: 22.10 – Hinterraum
• Poznań: 23.10 – CK Nowe Amore
• Warsaw: 24.10 – Chmury
• Prague: 29.10 – Café V lese

About Lolita Terrorist Sounds and Kiddy Citny

Founded by Maurizio Vitale, Lolita Terrorist Sounds has collaborated with members of bands like Einstürzende Neubauten, Iggy Pop, and PJ Harvey. The band’s provocative name stems from a fusion of Nabokov’s Lolita and the use of cut-up techniques inspired by William Burroughs. A debut album “St. Lola” was released in 2023.

Kiddy Citny is a German artist best known for his iconic paintings on the Berlin Wall in 1985. His work, characterized by his 3.6-meter-high heads, became world-famous through tourist photos and postcards. Citny’s art is part of collections at institutions like MoMA in New York.

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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(Photo by Mara von Kummer) hackedepicciotto (Alexander Hacke & Danielle de Picciotto) have shared details of a new album, “The Best of hackedepicciotto (Live in Napoli)”, that collates over 20 years of collaboration over two live performances recorded at the Auditorium Novecento, one of the oldest recording studios in Europe.

The album will be released on double vinyl, limited to 500 copies with exclusive signed print, and digitally on 1 November 2024, via Mute.

For over 20 years Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten) and artist, musician and filmmaker Danielle de Picciotto (co-founder of Love Parade) have been working together. The album includes reinterpretations of tracks from all of their studio albums: “Keepsakes” (2023), “The Silver Threshold” (2021), “Perseverantia” (2016), “Menetekel” (2017), and “The Current” (2020).

This new collection is a mixture of industrial beats, electronic sounds with classical harmonies and melodies, with some throat singing, Hurdy-gurdy and spoken word. Daniel Miller of Mute goes on to say that “their music is a genre of its own, something new and very intriguing.”

Listen to “The Silver Threshold (Live in Napoli)”, the title track from their 2021 album.

hackedepicciotto Live Dates

• 1 Nov – Parma (IT), Borgo Santa Brigida
• 2 Nov – Pordenone (IT), Astro Club
• 3 Nov – Milan (IT), Arci Bellezza
• 5 Nov – Turin (IT), Blah Blah
• 7 Nov – Pescara (IT), Scumm
• 8 Nov – Campobasso (IT), Circolo Beatnik
• 12 Nov – Lyon (FR), Sonic Lyon
• 29 Nov – Malmö (SW), Inkonst
• 30 Nov – Odense (DK), Klub Golem
• 6 Dec – Athens (GR), Temple
• 7 Dec – Thessaloniki (GR), Eightball
• 12 Dec – Bratislava (SK), Pink Whale
• 13 Dec – Augsburg (DE), Provino Club
• 15 Dec – Bielefeld (DE), Movie Bielefeld
• 18 Dec – Berlin (DE), Berghain Kantine – Album Release Party

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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(Photo by E Gabriel Edvy) Out on September 27 via Metropolis Records is the brand new PIG EP “Feast Of Agony”. The EP – available now in pre-order – holds six songs and encounters with the “Lord of Lard”, in which he “brings word to the wordless and truth to the truthless”.

The EP kicks off with “Heroin for the Damned”, a song co-written with Watts’ collaborator Jim Davies (a longtime member of Pitchshifter). The accompanying tracks are “Fallout“, “Comedown”, “Hand of Mercy”, “The Ratchet Effect” and “Baptise Bless & Bleed” (in a remix by Jim Davies).

“Feast of Agony” follows the recent remastered reissue of PIG’s landmark 1995 album “Sinsation” and the 2024 studio album “Red Room”, both of which are available via Metropolis Records.

This Autumn PIG will playing live during the Heroin for the Damned tour across North America.

About PIG

PIG is an industrial music project led by British musician Raymond Watts, who is also known for his contributions to the pioneering industrial band KMFDM. Formed in the late 1980s, PIG blends aggressive, distorted electronic sounds with dark, often satirical lyrics. Watts is the primary creative force behind the project, and over the years, he has collaborated with various musicians, including members of KMFDM, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Nine Inch Nails.

The band’s early work was heavily influenced by the industrial scene of the 1990s, with albums like “A Poke in the Eye… with a Sharp Stick” (1988) and “Praise the Lard” (1991) establishing PIG’s signature mix of gritty electronics and harsh, guitar-driven beats. Despite being less commercially prominent than some of his contemporaries, PIG developed a cult following for its theatrical performances and provocative style.

In the 2000s, after a period of hiatus, Watts resumed recording and touring under the PIG name. Albums like “The Gospel” (2016) and “Risen” (2018) brought fresh energy to the project, with Watts continuing to explore themes of sin, salvation, and decay, often framed in a darkly humorous context.

PIG’s music incorporates elements of industrial rock, post-punk, and electronic body music (EBM), creating a sound that is both abrasive and experimental.

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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Raymond Watts, better known as PIG, has released a fully remastered version of his iconic 1995 album, “Sinsation“. Out via Metropolis Records (CD, digital) and Armalyte Industries (deluxe 2xLP vinyl), this reissue arrives nearly three decades after the original, just in time to coincide with Watts’ forthcoming North American tour.

“Sinsation” originally hit the scene on Nothing Records, the label spearheaded by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor. The album emerged shortly after PIG opened for NIN, and as a result PIG found himself labelmates of acts such as Marilyn Manson, Autechre, and Einstürzende Neubauten.

Watts says this about the actual album: “Every record I make is PIG through a different noose, and when I made ‘Sinsation’ the noose hung high. It was born at Ranch Apocalypse in London, a place where creation and cremation coexisted. I was locked inside both the studio and myself, with only [guitarist] Steve White and a large box of drugs for company. ‘Sinsation’ was the sound of the last card turning and burning. The only way out was through. I had to give birth to the noise inside my head and record it.”

The remastering process was an emotional experience for Watts: “I was surprised and saddened to revisit ‘Sinsation’. Surprised by the energy and invention and saddened to hear the pain. But, I was strangely glad to have visited hell, and blessed that I didn’t stay.”

The original ‘Sinsation’ was a collaborative effort, recorded and mixed by PIG and Helen Woodward, featuring contributions from Karl Hyde (Underworld), Jimmy Cauty (The KLF), Steve White (KMFDM), Carol Anne Reynolds (Sow), and Japanese artists Imai Hisashi (Buck Tick) and Hoppy Kamiyama.

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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(Photo by Fabio Calabretta) On September 13th, the Barcelona-based, post-industrial duo Dame Area will release their fourth studio album, “Toda la verdad sobre Dame Area” (“The Whole Truth about Dame Area”), a collaboration with the labels Mannequin Records and Humo Internacional.

The album serves as a companion piece to 2022’s “Toda la mentira sobre Dame Area” (“All The Lies About Dame Area” – Màgia Roja and B.F.E Records), which had a stronger focus on melody, while this latest record is more aggressive and industrial-influenced, with a greater emphasis on percussion.

Here’s already a new track, “Si No Es Hoy Cuándo Es“.

Formed in 2017 within the underground scene of Barcelona’s Màgia Roja club, Dame Area comprises the Italian-Catalan duo Silvia Konstance and Viktor Lux Crux. They fuse industrial-tribal polyrhythms with minimalist synth basslines, drawing inspiration from avant-garde masters such as Esplendor Geometrico, Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, Einstürzende Neubauten, Can, Coil, Swans, Big Black, and Wolf Eyes. Dame Area released their debut album “Centro di Gravità” in 2018 on Màgia Roja and B.F.E Records. This was followed by “Ondas Tribales” in 2021, released on the Berlin-based label Mannequin Records.

Dame Area Tour Dates

• 09/08/2024 – WINCHESTER (GB) Three Wheel Drive Festival
• 10/08/2024 – CASTELBUONO (IT) Ypsigrock Festival
• 16/08/2024 – ALVESTA (SE) Kalabalik på Tyrolen Festival
• 17/08/2024 – SAINT-MALO (FR) La Route Du Rock
• 23/08/2024 – TORREMOLINOS Canela Fest.
• 24/08/2024 – LEIRIA (PT) Extramuralhas
• 30/08/2024 – BIRMINGHAM (GB) Supersonic Festival
• 14/09/2024 – LEFFINGE (BE) Leffingeleuren Festival
• 19/09/2024 – MEXICO (MX) 316
• 20/09/2024 – SAN JOSE (CR) Edificio Steinvorth
• 21/09/2024 – BOGOTA (CO) Asilo
• 27/09/2024 – SANTIAGO (CL) TBA
• 28/09/2024 – SAO PAULO (BR) Club Madame
• 03/10/2024 – MUNICH (DE) Rote Sonne
• 04/10/2024 – BERLIN (DE) Neue Zukunft
• 05/10/2024 – HAMBURG (DE) MS Stubnitz
• 11/10/2024 – PARIS (FR) Petit Bain (Gonzaï Night)
• 12/10/2024 – AURAY (FR) Les Nuits Soniques
• 18/10/2024 – MADRID (ES) TBA
• 19/10/2024 – VITORIA (ES) TBA
• 24/10/2024 – BRUXELLES (BE) Beursschouwburg
• 25/10/2024 – CHARLEROI (BE) Le Vecteur
• 26/10/2024 – INNSBRUCK (AT) Positive Futures Festival
• 31/10/2024 – LUZERN (CH) TBA
• 01/11/2024 – LAUSANNE (CH) Le Romandie : Le Bourg
• 02/11/2024 – LONDON (GB) The Lexington
• 05/11/2024 – BRIGHTON (GB) The Hope and Ruin
• 06/11/2024 – LEEDS (GB) Headrow House
• 08/11/2024 – BRISTOL (GB) Strange Brew
• 09/11/2024 – COURTRAI (BE) Sonic City Festival
• 10/11/2024 – POITIERS (FR) Salons de Blossac – Groweekend
• 15/11/2024 – ARLES (FR) Cargo de nuit
• 23/11/2024 – LEEUWARDEN (NL) Explore The North
• 29/11/2024 – LORIENT (FR) Hydrophone – Soirée LFSM
• 30/11/2024 – SAINT-BRIEUC (FR) Pavillons des expositions Temporaires
• 01/12/2024 – ANGERS (FR) Joker’s Pub
• 14/12/2024 – MILANO (IT) Arci Bellezza

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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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. 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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Genre/Influences: Industrial, Experimental, Industrial-Pop.

Format: Digital, 2CD, 2Vinyl.

Background/Info: Forty four years after the set up of this legendary formation “Rampen” brings Einstürzende Neubauten back into the spotlight. Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser and Felix Gebhard achieved fifteen new songs which have been introduced by the single “Ist Ist”.

Content: The early Industrial approach and improvisation evolved throughout the years by the Industrial label is still running through “Rampen”. You mainly hear it in the metallic percussion work and different noises which are sometimes hard to catch. But the ’alien pop music’ is also noticeable for the ‘softer’ side the band has elaborated and which in a way has something Pop and/or Ballad-like. They here are playing with acoustic instruments like guitar. Blixa Bargeld’s timbre of voice hasn’t changed throughout the years and remains a charismatic and single singer/performer.

+ + + : It’s simply fascinating to realize how this legendary band and pioneers of Industrial music are still innovative 44 years after their debut. You don’t exactly imagine Industrial- and Pop music as a match and yet “Rampen” reveals it’s possible. Surreal or abstract it sounds to me as an imaginary Dadaistic music creation featuring multiple outstanding songs. Blixa Bargeld and his acolytes took me by surprise and I can only but recommend this apocalyptic and alien-like composition. It has something accessible and even sweet but still raw and should I dare to say ‘perverted’ sound creation?! This is a free style which remains visionary. Respect guys!

– – – : I’m less into a few Ballad-driven songs which however bring extra diversity.

Conclusion: “Rampen” is totally different from the early, harsher years of the band although it remains a work without compromises and still visionary. Highly recommended!

Best songs: “Everything Will Be Fine”, “Wie Lange Noch”, “Pestalozzi”, “Gesundbrunnen”, “Besser Isses”, “Ist Ist”, “Ick Wees Nich (Noch Nich)”.

Rate: 9.

Artist & Label: https://neubauten.org/en/  www.facebook.com/EinstuerzendeNeubauten.TributePage

About Einstürzende Neubauten

Einstürzende Neubauten is a German experimental group formed in West Berlin in 1980, generally linked to a concert at the Moon Club on 1 April that year. Founding members Blixa Bargeld and N. U. Unruh remain in the line-up, joined by Jochen Arbeit and Rudolph Moser since 1997. The band is known for its use of custom-built instruments, largely made from scrap metal and building tools, alongside standard instrumentation. Forty-four years after that first show, the band released the album “Rampen (APM: Alien Pop Music)”, introduced by the single “Ist Ist”.

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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Yishai Sweartz of Tomorrow’s Rain and Berlin-based singer/composer Mona Mur are releasing a new album on June 20 via Soleilmoon Recordings. Titled “Clouds Of War,” the album is inspired by the life of Sweartz’s grandfather, Moshe Szniecki, a WWII Partisan. The music includes spoken word and experimental arrangements.

Yishai explains in the press release that “Clouds Of War” emerged from the compelling stories in his grandfather’s diary. During WWII, Moshe left his hometown at 17 after his family was murdered. He survived by joining a Partisan group in the Belarusian forests. He later settled in Israel, living peacefully until his death at 94. Yishai explains further: “During World War II, 17-year-old Moshe Szniecki left his hometown when all other members of his family were murdered by Nazi hordes. In the depths of the Belarusian forests, Moshe joined a Partisan group and fought boldly. Guided by what he called ‘The Codes of the Woods,’ Moshe survived.” He made it to Israel, married, and had a family with his wife Hanna and two daughters. He died peacefully at 94, at ease with himself. He survived.”

“To me, music is a sacred art form. You can transmit and connect on a level of empathy. Violence, cruelty, greed, ego, hate, contempt, hostility dissolve for a fleeting moment that still might change things profoundly,” explains Mona Mur reflecting on the conceptual side of the collaboration that lead to the release of “Clouds of War”. “What is the right look at the atrocities of war, holocaust, genocide ? Moshe Shnitzki, 17 years old, had to transform in a split second, in order to survive, from a pious teenage boy into a warrior. Fight back or die, head into the deep dark forest, leave a civilization that failed to rise up to its proper meaning. And survive. How does that feel, how does that sound ? This is what “Clouds of War” is about.”

The collaboration between the two musicians began in summer 2021 when diary excerpts, translated into English, were recorded by Yishai Sweartz and sent to Mona Mur. In her studio KATANA, Mona Mur used these as the basis for the album, adding layers of voices, guitar, and electronic sounds.

As the project evolved, Anja Huwe of X-mal Deutschland contributed her voice. The album is also already featured in Elfi Mikesch’s documentary “War or Peace”. You can pre-order their album below on Bandcamp and check out the first 2 songs already.

About Yishai Sweartz and Mona Mur

Yishai Sweartz is a musician, performer and music promoter from Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the vocalist of the bands Tomorrow’s Rain and Nail Within and the avant-garde dark ambient project Thy Mesmerized. A frequent collaborator of a large number of artists including Mille Petrozza (Kreator), Attila Csihar(Mayhem), Fernando Ribeiro (Moonspell), Gregor Mackintosh (Paradise Lost), Michael Denner (Mercyful Fate / King Diamond) and many others. Yishai has promoted hundreds of Rock and Metal shows in Israel for more than 25 years.

Mona Mur from her side is a singer, musician, composer and producer, famous for her collaborations and live shows with the likes of FM Einheit (Einstürzende Neubauten), En Esch (KMFDM), Grzegorz Ciechowski (Republika) or JJ Burnel (The Stranglers). She also created film music (“Last Exit: Space”) and video game soundtracks (“Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days”).

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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(Photo by Thomas Rabsch ) On April 5, Einstürzende Neubauten will release their new double album “Rampen (apm: alien pop music)”. Today the band is sharing “Ist Ist” the first single to be released from the upcoming release. The track is streaming now on YouTube and all digital platforms for any playlist shares.

In its 44th year of existence, the band is going back to its roots but re(de)fining it.

“On the album, I found a few solutions and formulated things in ways I haven’t formulated them before, because they were never so clear to me,” Blixa Bargeld says. “I’m someone who believes you can achieve knowledge through music. It’s always been that way. I follow the conviction. I’ll find something in the music that I didn’t know before. And sing something that I didn’t know. Something that turns out to be true. Or, to take this down a notch, something that at least has meaning.”

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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Einstuerzende Neubauten announce the upcoming release of a new double album, titled “Rampen – apm: alien pop music”. The release will be out on the band’s own label Potomak. You’ll be able to get the album as limited edition double LP, regular double LP, double CD, and of course also digitally. The release date is April 5th.

“Rampen – apm: alien pop music” is the follow-up to the 2020 album “Alles in Allem”.

Einstürzende Neubauten formed in West Berlin in 1980. The group is currently composed of founding members Blixa Bargeld (lead vocals, guitar, keyboard) and N.U. Unruh (custom-made instruments, percussion, vocals), long-time contributor Alexander Hacke (bass, vocals), plus Jochen Arbeit (guitar, vocals), and Rudolph Moser (custom-built instruments, percussion, vocals), who both joined the line-up in 1997.

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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Genre/Influences: Cinematic.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Italian bass player and multi-instrumentalist Massimo Pupillo has released massive things, collaborations and productions in his career. He got involved with Zu and collaborated with an endless number of famous artists like  Mike Patton (Faith No More), Jim O’ Rourke (Sonic Youth), Guy Picciotto & Joe Lally (Fugazi), FM Einheit ( Einstürzende Neubauten), Damo Suzuki (CAN), David Tibet (Current 93), Mick Harris (Scorn), Gordon Sharp (This Mortal Coil & Cindytalk) etc etc.

Content: This work sounds in the true line of Glacial Movements; a sonic exploration of deeply Ambient and Cinematic fields. The work is fully evasive although featuring a few darker, mysterious, parts -which are mainly emerging at the end of the work. The wafting side of the work has been accentuated by the effect of voices. 

+ + + : This work has a true visual strength which is totally fitting with the great artwork of the album featuring landscapes and pictures of tribes. It feels like traveling through isolated spaces mixing mainly relaxing passages together with a few obscure parts.

– – – : The main point with this kind of productions is that there’s no visual content and that’s what I’m a bit missing; a wider conceptual approach mixing music together with other artistic creation like film, photography, ballet etc..

Conclusion: An album inviting the listener to dream away and visit other dimensions and cultures.

Best songs: “Ulda”, “Beaivi”, “Sami”.

Rate: 7.

Artist: www.zuism.net/massimo /  www.facebook.com/massimozu

Label: www.glacialmovements.com / www.facebook.com/glacialmovements

About Massimo Pupillo

Massimo Pupillo is an Italian bass player and multi-instrumentalist, best known as a founding member of Zu, with whom he released eighteen albums and played more than 2,000 shows worldwide. He has also collaborated with musicians including Mike Patton, Jim O’Rourke, Guy Picciotto, Joe Lally, FM Einheit, Damo Suzuki, David Tibet, Mick Harris, and Gordon Sharp.

“Our Forgotten Ancestors” was released on 20 October 2023 through Glacial Movements in digital and CD formats, featuring eleven tracks including “Beaivi,” “Ulda,” and “Sami.”

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

Cologne’s Blue Shell hosts a brand new event series: The Neue Klangordnung (New Sound Order, NKO). The newly founded NKO collective brings the “Blue Shell” back to its roots: rough industrial underground sound, rooted in body music (EBM), post-techno and the new cold / dark wave.

The NKO sees itself as a space for dance and sound experiments, “in which people regain control of their smartphones and their heads are freed for the experience.”

Max Esser explains: “By mainstreaming underground music genres such as techno, the NKO wants to shape new, alternative music styles of tomorrow with its DIY approach. This is inspired by sound pioneers such as Cabaret Voltaire, DAF, Test Dept. and Esplendor Geómetrico, and the next chapter of Industrial is to be entered into at NKO under the term Post-Techno. This is implemented behind the mixing desks of DJ and darkwave performer BORGBORG, the industrial-purified mixing master Hugo Dirac, the Cologne selector Klaus F., and the sound researcher MX Probe.”

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Neue Klangordnung (@neueklangordnung) • Instagram photos and videos

For fans of: Einstürzende Neubauten, Esplendor Geométrico, NAKED, Spit Mask, Broken English Club, Parrish Smith, Bauhaus, Severed Heads, DJedjotronic, ADULT, Fixmer/McCarthy, Boy Harsher, Alessandro Adriani, Ancient Methods, Randolph & Mortimer, Unconscious, Sarin, Alen Skanner, Years of Denial, Whitehouse, Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV, Qual.

This is what the NKO Spotify playlist sounds like.

What, where and how of The Neue Klangordnung

• When: 24. November 2023 – 22:00 o‘clock
• Where: Blue Shell, Luxemburger Str. 32, 50674 Cologne
• Cost: 8€ Box office, 6€ limited presale via Rausgegangen

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 experimental/metal band from Poland, Whalesong, has recently released their new full-length album, “Leaving A Dream”. Don’t be misled by the ‘metal’ label; the album offers a diverse range of sounds that fans of Swans or Einstürzende Neubauten should appreciate.

“Leaving A Dream” is an impressive 16-track strong album, spanning over 120 minutes. Yes, over 120 minutes! It was composed between 2016 and 2020 and recorded at Antisound Studio in Poland on various dates from 2020 to 2023.

The album features a range of guest artists, including Attila Csihar (of Sunn O))), Mayhem, and Tormentor), Steve Blanco (from Imperial Triumphant), and Wukir Suryadi (of Senyawa).

Whalesong is an experimental music collective hailing from Poland, led primarily by Michal Kielbasa, known for his work with Grave of Love, Lugola, Harmony of Struggle, and NHC. Established in 2009, from its inception, the band has drawn significant influence from genres such as industrial, noise rock, no wave, and drone. Over the years, they’ve forged a distinctive style that melds post-rock, doom metal, jazz, psychedelic rock, neofolk, and post-punk.

In recent times, they’ve collaborated with notable artists such as Thor Harris (of Swans and Wrekmeister Harmonies) and Wacław Kiełtyka (from Decapitated and Machine Head).

Warmly recommended! Also check out the new video for “Struggle”. Read the review of ‘Leaving A Dream’.

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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Out now via the Alfa Matrix Bandcamp page is an all new mini-album by the Hungarian dark electro act First Aid 4 Souls. With “Dancing At the Abyss” mini-album, Hungarian electronic music artist István Gazdag introduces techno club influences of his First Aid Tech project into the darker industrial mood of First Aid 4 Souls.

Included are 7 new songs that hang somewhere between techno body music and industrial dance mixed with the distorted or manipulated sampled vocals by Mortum and Vic Willow. All this flavored with a darker industrial touch.

This mini-album is out now via Bandcamp as an immediate download and will follow on all other streaming platforms in the next two weeks.

Veteran Hungarian artist István Gazdag, formerly of Vacuum, has been an active participant in the avant-garde electronic/industrial scene since the late 1980s. He has a diverse range of releases on various labels and has done remarkable remix work for legendary bands such as Coil, Soft Cell, Test. Dept., Cabaret Voltaire, and Einstürzende Neubauten. In recent years, he has collaborated with US-based singer Mortum from Human Vault, who has contributed darker lyrics and a harsher vocal style to their joint project, First Aid 4 Souls.

Earlier this year the project released the 70-track release “This Present Darkness” including four full-length albums (“Trash Cathedral,” “Dark Tunnel,” “Keep This World Empty,” and “I Am The Night”) plus the previously unreleased remix album “Your Social Skill Demised”. The four albums have been re-edited, reconstructed, or newly remastered, supplemented with a variety of previously unreleased bonus material. Read the review of ‘Dancing At The Abyss’.

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.

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American artist Cal Glover-Wessel last year released a new album as Caldon Glover. “Labyrinth” released by Cyclic Law became without a shadow of a doubt my favorite Dark-Ambient production from 2022. The work is carried by dense and poignant, tormented, atmospheres reminding great productions from the early 80s. I got in touch with Cal to get more info about his work.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Most of the people probably know you for your work under the Azfarat moniker. So how did you finally come to start releasing work as Caldon Glover and what makes the differences between both projects?

Cal: I actually stopped using the Azfarat name/ project a few years ago, I’m a bit surprised you’ve heard it! When I started making music as Azfarat, around 2013 or so, I was much more inspired by harsh Noise and early Industrial Soundscapes, but as time went on Azfarat started becoming more atmospheric, until it got the point that you couldn’t really tell my Azfarat releases apart from my Caldon Glover ones. I ended up retiring the project because of the similarities between the two, and because I felt I had more creative freedom simply releasing music under my own name, more like a composer or a writer, and worried that if I stuck with a project name than people would expect every release to sound the same.

Q: Did you’d specific ideas in mind, influences and eventually criteria when setting up this project?

Cal: I didn’t really, when I started releasing music under my own name, about four years ago, it was just because I had some ideas I wanted to explore that didn’t fit under the Azfarat moniker. My influences early on were more 90s and early 2000s Electronic music, the stuff I grew up listening to like Orbital. My first Caldon Glover release, “Peddlers Of Pastel Delights”, is markedly different from what I’ve been releasing recently (there’re drums!), but it was always my intention to let my style and focus shift with what I found exciting. There’s quite a disparity between all of my releases because of this, and it’s entirely possible that what I end up recording in a few years will sound very different than what I’m releasing now.

Q: You already released a few productions during the past few years. How do you see the project growing and evolving in sound, production and global approach?

Cal: It’s very important to me to gravitate towards what’s exciting to me, right now I’m very fascinated with Drone and subtle dissonance, and utilizing found sound and field recording. I have a deep love for early Industrial music, especially Einstürzende Neubauten and Coil, and I try to let those influences permeate my current work because I love the freedom and fluidity that came from the early Industrial scene. The way that it was filled with people who weren’t really musicians in the technical sense but felt such a powerful urge to create that they ended up creating something new and strange and wonderful because they didn’t really know what they were doing, I try to hold on to that ethos with everything I do.

I also have trouble doing the same thing twice, I get stagnated and bored, so I’m always looking for something new to try. Soundwise, I can’t really predict how I’ll shift in the next few years, but I know I’m getting more focused and allowing myself to take more time with my projects, which I thinks makes them better. I’m trying to take more risks as well, which could result in better music or much, much worse music but either way I’m excited to find out.

Q: Let’s talk about the new album “Labyrintia” which seems to be a conceptual work. What is it all about and how did you transpose the concept/themes into sound?

Cal: I’ve always been really fascinated by mazes, not really solving them so much but more by their meaning and their presence. They’re strange, filled with mystery, and a bit spiritual in some ways. And it always struck me as interesting that mazes and labyrinths seem to exist in a lot of very different and isolated cultures across the world. And so I thought, what if it’s all one maze? What if a single massive labyrinth, older than humanity, cuts across and through our universe and through all of time and that’s why the maze is such a ubiquitous symbol across the world? And I let my imagination run from there.

Soundwise, I wanted to convey not only a structure that was massive and timeless, but the culture of the people caught in this colossal otherworldly structure, so I combined the old with the new. There’s a lot of electronic Soundscapes in “Labyrintia”, but I also recorded, and in some cases heavily altered, a lot of acoustic instruments, such as a mountain dulcimer and a reeded Kaval. It can be hard to tell because of how much heavy editing I did, but quite a lot of “Labyrintia” is found sound too, lots and lots of extremely processed field recordings went into the album. In the end there ended up being very little actual synth work, which I think added a lot to the overall strange texture of the piece.

Q: What have been the different stages in the writing and achievement of “Labyrintia” you’d to go through? And did you experience challenges and major difficulties?

Cal: The beginning was the hardest. The concept came to me easily, as I mentioned I’ve always been a little obsessed with mazes, but early on I hit a bit of a wall trying to figure out the best way to convey the theme sonically. It came to me while I was camping on a mountain with my partner, we had taken a bit of acid and I was laying down, I may have fallen asleep or maybe my mind was just really wandering, but I had my eyes closed and I started seeing all of these tableaus of alien worlds where strange creatures danced in circles with even stranger instruments. At one point I saw these four creatures, like thin grey people with extremely long necks all dressed in gold singing towards the sky, and their singing created a star. These images of a sort of alien bacchanal broke through my writers block and inspired me to use acoustic instruments as part of the process, to try and create a world both familiar and alien.

After that it started to fall into place. I spent a lot of time just collecting sound, recording and processing all these bits and pieces and then stitching them all together later. I work at a store that sells all sorts of musical instruments so I’d come home each day with some new thing to try to record and I’d run the recording through all sorts of effects or pitch it up or down, just trying everything and seeing what stuck. It was a little chaotic and I had to kind of take a breather every once in a while and let myself get focused again so I could actually finish a piece. Eventually I felt like the album was very nearly finished but was still missing something, so I had my friend, credited on the album as Ryan Wade Ruehlen, come record a few parts. He does a lot of very out there Experimental music based around wind instruments, and he brought over a baritone sax and a home-made instrument that was a few lengths of flexible pipe with a sax mouthpiece on one end a removable funnel on the other, and we recorded these insane otherworldly sounds using just those instruments, and that was what finally tied the album together for me.

Q: How do you expect things evolving for Caldon Glover and what’s in the pipeline for 2023?

Cal: It’s hard to say what I expect from the future, but I’m always creating, always exploring sound, and hopefully always getting better! I don’t want to say too much yet, but I’ve recently finished another album that I think complements “Labyrintia”, and we’ll hopefully be seeing it in the spring this year, so keep an eye out! And thanks for having me!

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

(Photo by Errefotografia) Hackedepicciotto (Alexander Hacke & Danielle de Picciotto) have announce details of three reissues on Mute: “Perseverantia”, “Menetekel” and “The Current” out on vinyl and CD on 28 April 2023.

You all should know Alexander Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten and Crime & the City Solution; and Danielle de Picciotto as co-founder of Love Parade, Space Cowboys and Crime & the City Solution.

Hackedepicciotto’s debut album, “Perseverantia” was originally released in 2016 and was recorded in the Mojave Desert, California. “Menetekel”, Hackedepicciotto’s third studio album, has been out of print since its original pressing in 2017. Side D of the double LP is a recording of a sound installation from an Austrian church that Hackedepicciotto were invited to compose in. Originally released in 2020, their fourth studio album, “The Current”, holds violin harmonies and choirs throughout the entire record and acts as a soundtrack for what the band describe as “an apocalyptic feature-length film, hopefully with a happy ending.”

These reissues follow the release of 2021’s album for Mute, “The Silver Threshold”.

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

(Photo by Thomas Rabsch) Out on March 3rd via Rustblade is the all new album by FM Einheit. Released in a limited edition of 499 copies on grey marbled vinyl, it shows the co-founder and ex-percussionist of Einstürzende Neubauten mixing experimentation and metal percussions with art rock. You can expect a dissonant guitars mix with pianos, trumpets, and tightly wrapped rhythms with vocals by F.M. Einheit and Rica Blunk.

Rica Blunk is a German choreographer, dancer, singer and voice actress, and also the sister of that other musician Timo Blunk. And for the Depeche Mode fans, Blunk was the bassplayer in Palais Schaumburg, a new wave and post-punk band that gained some popularity in Germany in the early 80s. In 1981 the band signed with Daniel Miller’s Mute Records, after which they played support for Depeche Mode.

FM Einheit (real name Frank Martin Strauss) is a German musician and composer. He is best known as the former percussionist and “industrial” drummer for the influential German experimental rock band Einstürzende Neubauten. Einheit joined the band in 1981 and was a member for over a decade, during which time he played on some of their albums, including “Halber Mensch” and “Tabula Rasa.”

In addition to his work with Einstürzende Neubauten, Einheit has also collaborated with a number of other musicians and artists, including Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, the German electronic musician Alva Noto, and the experimental filmmaker Heinz Emigholz. Einheit’s work often incorporates unconventional percussion instruments and found objects, and his music has been described as “industrial,” “experimental,” and “avant-garde.”

Side-Line also covered Depeche Mode’s ‘s ’.

About FM Einheit

FM Einheit, born Frank-Martin Strauß on 18 December 1958 in Dortmund, Germany, is a self-taught percussionist who began his career in the punk scene, joining the Hamburg band Abwärts in 1979. In the early 1980s he joined Einstürzende Neubauten as percussionist, becoming central to the band’s sound through custom-built metal instruments and its confrontational live shows. He left Einstürzende Neubauten in the mid-1990s during the recording of “Ende Neu.”

After Neubauten, Einheit formed the band Gry with Danish vocalist Gry Bagøien, releasing “The Touch of E!” (1998) and “Public Recording” (2000), and has collaborated with KMFDM, Goethes Erben, Diamanda Galás and Mona Mur. His new solo album features vocals from Einheit and Rica Blunk, who was bassist in Palais Schaumburg, a German post-punk band signed to Daniel Miller’s Mute Records that supported Depeche Mode on tour. Rica Blunk’s earlier band, Palais Schaumburg, supported Depeche Mode on tour after signing to Daniel Miller’s Mute Records – the Depeche Mode link referenced alongside the new album.

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

For the past couple of months we have been testing ChatGPT at Side-Line to see if it could help us with our text writing. And we have been launching all kind of queries, sometimes with pleasant surprises. This is the first in a few articles where we let the AI powered chat software spin a few texts.

For those unaware, GPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer) is a machine learning model developed by OpenAI. GPT is a type of language model that is trained to predict the next word in a sequence of words, given the previous words in the sequence. ChatGPT is a variant of GPT that is specifically designed for conversation and it is trained on a large dataset of human conversation, and is able to generate human-like responses to a given input. It is able to understand the context and meaning of words, and can generate appropriate responses based on this understanding. ChatGPT is able to generate responses that are coherent and appropriate, and can engage in conversation on a wide range of topics.

In summary, ChatGPT is a machine learning model that is designed to generate human-like responses to input, allowing it to engage in conversation with users. It does this by predicting the next word in a sequence based on the previous words and context, using its understanding of language and meaning.

A few weeks ago we let it write a text on the future of industrial music, this is what it came up with.

What is the future of industrial music?

It is difficult to predict the future of any music genre with certainty, as it is influenced by a wide range of factors such as cultural trends, technological advances, and the evolution of musical tastes. However, it is possible to make some educated guesses about the future of industrial music based on its history and current state.

One potential future for industrial music is that it will continue to evolve and incorporate elements from other genres. Industrial music has always been a hybrid genre, incorporating elements from a wide range of styles such as punk, electronic, and metal. As such, it is likely that industrial music will continue to borrow from and be influenced by other genres in the future.

Another potential future for industrial music is that it will continue to be a niche genre, but with a dedicated and passionate fan base. Industrial music has always been a genre that appeals to a specific audience, and it is likely that this will continue to be the case in the future. While industrial music may not achieve mainstream success, it could continue to have a dedicated and influential fan base that keeps the genre alive and vibrant.

Technological advances may also play a role in the future of industrial music. The use of electronic instrumentation and production techniques has always been a key part of the industrial sound, and it is likely that technological advances will continue to shape the sound of industrial music in the future. For example, the use of virtual instruments and software synthesizers may become more prevalent in industrial music production, allowing artists to create new and innovative sounds.

Another potential future for industrial music is that it will continue to be a genre that reflects and addresses social and political issues. Many industrial bands have always used their music as a way to comment on and critique society and its problems, and it is likely that this will continue to be the case in the future. Industrial music has always been a genre that has addressed themes such as power, control, and oppression, and it is possible that these themes will continue to be relevant in the future.

Overall, the future of industrial music is uncertain, but it is likely that the genre will continue to evolve and adapt to changing cultural and technological trends. While industrial music may not achieve mainstream success, it could continue to have a dedicated and passionate fan base that keeps the genre alive and relevant.

What are the challenges for industrial music?

There are a number of challenges and issues that industrial music has faced and continues to face. Some of these challenges include:

• Lack of mainstream success: Industrial music has always been a niche genre, and it has struggled to achieve mainstream success. This can make it difficult for industrial bands to find a wide audience and to make a living from their music.
• Limited commercial appeal: Industrial music is often characterized by its experimental and unconventional sound, which can make it less appealing to a commercial market. This can make it difficult for industrial bands to gain the support of record labels and to find opportunities to perform and tour.
• Stereotyping and misunderstanding: Industrial music is often misunderstood and stereotyped by the mainstream media, who may portray the genre as being violent or dangerous. This can make it difficult for industrial bands to gain respect and recognition for their music.
• Competition with other genres: Industrial music has always been a hybrid genre, incorporating elements from a wide range of styles such as punk, electronic, and metal. This can make it difficult for industrial bands to stand out in a crowded music market, as they may be competing with other genres for attention.
• Limited resources: Industrial music is often produced on a small scale, with many bands operating on a DIY basis. This can make it difficult for industrial bands to access the resources and support they need to create and promote their music.

There are a number of ways that industrial music could potentially reinvent itself and adapt to changing cultural and technological trends. Some possible ways that industrial music could evolve include:

• Incorporating elements from other genres: Industrial music has always been a hybrid genre, incorporating elements from a wide range of styles such as punk, electronic, and metal. Industrial music could continue to evolve by borrowing from and being influenced by other genres, incorporating new sounds and ideas into its sound.
• Experimenting with new production techniques: Industrial music has always been characterized by its use of electronic instrumentation and production techniques. Industrial bands could continue to explore new and innovative ways of using technology in their music, such as using virtual instruments or software synthesizers.
• Collaborating with artists from other genres: Industrial music could potentially collaborate with artists from other genres, creating new and unique sounds and styles. This could help to bring industrial music to a wider audience and to reach new fans.
• Refocusing on political and social themes: Many industrial bands have always used their music as a way to comment on and critique society and its problems. Industrial music could potentially refocus on these themes, using its music to address contemporary social and political issues.
• Exploring new visual aesthetics: Industrial music has always had a distinctive visual aesthetic, with many fans sporting black clothing and leather or PVC gear. Industrial bands could potentially explore new visual styles and aesthetics, helping to keep the genre fresh and exciting.

Overall, there are many ways that industrial music could potentially reinvent itself and adapt to changing cultural and technological trends. It is likely that the genre will continue to evolve and adapt over time, and that new artists and bands will bring their own unique perspectives and influences to the table.

What were the most innovative industrial bands in the past?

There have been many innovative industrial bands throughout the history of the genre. Some of the most influential and innovative industrial bands include:

1. Kraftwerk: Kraftwerk is a German band that is often credited as the pioneers of electronic music. They were one of the first bands to use electronic instrumentation and production techniques in their music, and their experimental and innovative approach to sound helped to shape the industrial genre.
2. Throbbing Gristle: Throbbing Gristle was a British band that was active in the 1970s and early 1980s. They were known for their experimental and unconventional approach to music, and were one of the first bands to be associated with the industrial genre.
3. Einstürzende Neubauten: Einstürzende Neubauten is a German band that is known for their innovative and unconventional use of found objects and industrial materials in their music. They have been influential in the industrial genre, and have inspired many other artists to experiment with new and unusual sounds.
4. Skinny Puppy: Skinny Puppy is a Canadian band that is known for their innovative use of electronic instrumentation and production techniques in their music. They have been influential in the industrial genre, and have inspired many other artists to experiment with electronic sounds.
5. Nine Inch Nails: Nine Inch Nails is an American band that is known for their experimental and innovative approach to music. They have been influential in the industrial genre, and have incorporated elements from a wide range of styles into their sound.

What are the most innovative industrial bands today?

There are many contemporary industrial bands that are known for their experimental and innovative approach to music. Some examples of innovative industrial bands that are active today include:

1. Blanck Mass: Blanck Mass is a British electronic music project that is known for its experimental and unconventional sound. They incorporate elements from a wide range of genres into their music, and are known for their innovative use of electronic instrumentation and production techniques.
2. Youth Code: Youth Code is an American band that is known for their aggressive and experimental sound, which incorporates elements from industrial, punk, and electronic music. They are known for their innovative use of electronic instrumentation and production techniques, and for their unconventional approach to music.
3. Pharmakon: Pharmakon is an American noise musician who is known for her experimental and unconventional approach to music. She incorporates elements from industrial, noise, and electronic music into her sound, and is known for her innovative use of electronic instrumentation and production techniques.
4. Factory Floor: Factory Floor is a British band that is known for their experimental and innovative approach to music. They incorporate elements from a wide range of genres into their sound, and are known for their innovative use of electronic instrumentation and production techniques.
5. Zanias: Zanias is an Australian electronic musician who is known for her experimental and unconventional approach to music. She incorporates elements from industrial, techno, and ambient music into her sound, and is known for her innovative use of electronic instrumentation and production techniques.

These are just a few examples of the many innovative industrial bands that are active today.

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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(Photo by Michaela Olexova) A year on from the release of his debut album, “Insubstantial As Ghosts”, the London based experimental electronic artist BArTc is to issue a seven track companion piece entitled “Ghosts” tomorrow.

His debut album, “Insubstantial As Ghosts”, plus much of his brand new companion piece “Ghosts” were recorded in early 2021 while the UK was in lockdown. ICR label owner Colin Potter, himself a well known figure in the experimental genre as a member of Nurse With Wound and sound engineer, heard some of Barton’s work and offered to release it, handpicking several of the tracks that subsequently appeared on the debut and mastering both that album and “Ghosts”.

“Ghosts” features two reworked tracks from the project’s debut (“Energy Field [long]” and “Malleus Incuss Tapes [inner ear mix]”), plus five further pieces recorded around the same period. “Ghosts” mixes layers of analogue synth, dark ambient drones and experimental work combined with field recordings.

The release was mastered by ICR owner and Nurse With Wound member Colin Potter and is available digitally via bandcamp and in a very limited Bartefact edition with handmade and numbered artwork from tomorrow on.

Here’s the video for “Energy Field [long]”.

About BArTc

BArTc is London based experimental electronic audio visual artist Jason Barton. BArTc is comprised of the symbols for three chemical elements – Boron (B), Argon (Ar) and Technetium (Tc) – while also giving nods to both Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and his own surname.

Initially inspired by instrumental electronic records in his father’s record collection by Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Barton gravitated towards underground industrial icons such as Coil, Einstürzende Neubauten, Chris & Cosey and Skinny Puppy while in his teens, before digging deeper into the work of early German electronicists such as Cluster, Musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, plus the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. He cites sound recordist (and Cabaret Voltaire co-founder) Chris Watson as a key influence.

Having collected synthesisers and made music (both alone and with friends) for several years, Barton subsequently started the project Less Than One to create accompanying videos that he began posting on Instagram. It has led to commissions from the likes of Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini.

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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(Photo by Jürgen Sieckmeyer) Out on February 17 2023 on Mute is the reissue of Phew’s 1992 album, “Our Likeness” which was recorded at Conny Plank’s studio in Cologne. On this album avant-garde vocalist, electronics innovator and post-punk artist Phew was joined by Jaki Liebezeit, Alexander Hacke, Chrislo Haas and Thomas Stern.

Phew first came to the fore as the vocalist of Japanese post-punk group Aunt Sally (whose 1979 debut was reissued last year on Mesh-Key) before going on to record a solo single with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Her 1981 self-titled album, recorded with Liebezeit and Holger Czukay, was engineered by Conny Plank, and was followed by 1987’s “View”.

It was Chrislo Haas (D.A.F. / Liaisons Dangereuses / Der Plan), who had met Phew briefly when Plank engineered her debut solo album in 1981, who arranged for Alexander Hacke (guitar / Einstürzende Neubauten) and Thomas Stern (bass / Crime & the City Solution) to join. Can’s drummer Jaki Liebezeit also reunited with Phew to collaborate alongside this new generation of German experimental musicians. Chrislo Haas also introduced Phew to Daniel Miller, for the original release of “Our Likeness”.

Phew remembers: “When I was recording at Conny’s Studio in 1981, a young German man came to visit, sat quietly in the studio for a while and left without saying a word. His politeness was long remembered and can still be recalled. It was when he came to Japan that I discovered he was Chrislo Haas of D.A.F. At the end of the 1980s he visited me in Tokyo, then we decided to make something together, and a few months later we were recording at Conny’s Studio. Chrislo contacted the musicians who took part, Alex Hacke, Jaki Liebezeit and Thomas Stern, told Mute about the project and Our Likeness was released. I often wonder what kind of music Chrislo would have made if he had still been here on earth. Twenty-four years later, I met Alex Hacke again at a festival in Poland, where I got to play with hackedepicciotto. And now I am working with Danielle de Picciotto. More to come!”

You can check out the title track 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!

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Crime & the City Solution, who recently returned to the studio to record a cover of The Doors’ classic 1967 ode to alienation, “People Are Strange”, have just announced details of a series that will see their long out of print catalogue reissued on vinyl for the first time in decades via Mute Records.

The series begins in January 2023 with the reissue of the three albums that founder Simon Bonney considers the origin of his true voice and the definitive sound he sought for Crime & the City Solution: “Shine” (1988, set for release on limited gold vinyl), “The Bride Ship” (1989, available on limited white vinyl) and “Paradise Discotheque” (1990, out on limited orange vinyl).

Crime & the City Solution’s second album, “Shine”, heralds the arrival of the first Berlin incarnation, and sees Simon Bonney, Mick Harvey and Bronwyn Adams decamp from London to Berlin. With a more experimental sound, which drew less on Melbourne post punk scene roots and took a more explorative musical approach, this lineup featured Einstürzende Neubauten’s Alexander Hacke on guitar, ex-DAF/Liaisons Dangereuses electronicus Chrislo Haas on vintage Korg patchbay synth, and free jazz bassist Thomas Stern.

“The Bride Ship” soon followed and saw the Berlin line up return to Hansa Tonstudio in West Berlin, this time with Gareth Jones lending a hand with production. In 1990, following a move by Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams to Vienna, the now classic line up travelled to Conny Plank’s legendary studio to record “Paradise Discotheque”.

About Crime and the City Solution

Formed in Sydney by Simon Bonney at the age of 16, Crime & the City Solution’s early performances from 1977-1979 had a big impact on key figures of the early Melbourne art-punk/post punk scene. In 1984, Bad Seed Mick Harvey shipped Bonney to England to form the London based Crime with their friend ex-Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S Howard, with his brother Harry Howard on bass and Epic Soundtracks on drums. Two years on, having toured Europe, the UK and US and released several EPs and an album, this lineup reached its zenith at its finale in a historic swansong performance in Wim Wenders’ cinematic masterpiece “Wings of Desire”.

Following the Berlin incarnation, encapsulated in these three reissues and the live album, “The Adversary”, it would be 20 years before the band, then based in Detroit, would return with their fifth studio album, “American Twilight”.

Back now after a 10-year hiatus, Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams have been touring through Europe with a new Berlin based incarnation, their final date of the year will be at La Maroquinerie in Paris on 27 November.

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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Einstürzende Neubauten guitarist Jochen Arbeit releases his forthcoming album “Tier Macht Toene” (“Animal Makes Sounds’) this month, September 23rd. The album was made with homemade instruments and others built by Sonic Youth guitar builder Yuri Landman. Arbeit is joined on the album by Sonja Kosche.

You can exclusively listen to the album below ahead of the official release tomorrow.

About the album, Arbeit says: “A long while ago one day in forced Isolation, detached from time and space, something broke free that was asleep before. Reduced to the minimum vital functions of life a Tier awoke from which all Schmerz and Lust broke free, in which old Trauma were hidden inside way too long. It spoke in Toene the stories it had to tell of loneliness but also from interactions that led to reactions that not always were agreed upon, rarely harmonic, but that found themselves in a We with special value.

Old images broke free like a suppressed madness from a thicket and showed an exhaustion but also a force and strength that was vividly perceptible.

How can one describe what is not describable when two meet. The one who was inside the Berlin Music Scene for decades with knowledge that seemed obvious and the other who made music a long time ago but lost herself for decades and did not trust to express herself from fear what could come up with it and emerge. It stays hard to describe.

Nothing was planned or predictable. The forced isolation because of the pandemic gave urgently needed time to develop something special and precious. The music expresses emotions that were hidden in the dark and finally broke free and told not only from old despair and not overcome trauma but also brought strength, satisfaction, peace and calm that you can try to feel inside the screeching-oppressive and nearly screaming tones.

When we could we sat down to generate sound with self made instruments, developed a dialog that words could not tell.This was finally a motor which kept us alive, a dynamic that functions in the moment, spontaneously without thinking.”

Tier Macht Toene will be available for download and streaming on September 23rd via Dymaxion Groove Records.

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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“Alles wird gut” is the third EP for the Ukranian post-industrial act Ship Her Son and the ninth release for the Dnipropop label. The work on the release started more than a year ago and was finalized during a period of the full-scale war beginning.

In a reaction Anton Shiferson goes further into detail on what effect this had: “This, for sure, was reflected both in the sound/mood in general and in the themes of individual tracks. There are no soul-warming quotes or recipes of traditional cuisine here – it is, rather, a complete story about the crisis state of man and his worldview, where there is still some room for irony and hope.”

The Ukrainian post-industrial electronic one-man band was formed in Lviv in 2020 by Anton Shiferson. The band brings a combination of ironic German speech and a cold mixture of EBM, darkwave, electro-industrial, and techno which is heavily influenced by bands like Einstürzende Neubauten, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Laibach, Wumpscut, and a big dose of experimental metal. Lyrical themes contain many references to Ukrainian life, culture, traditions, and local meme-heroes.

The project started with two EPs in the summer of 2020 and in May 2021 the debut album “Essen” was released. In June 2021 the Ship Her Son remix of Till Lindemann’s single “Ich hasse Kinder” was released in the digital version and in early Spring of 2022, right after the war started in Ukraine, the band joined 54 other Ukrainian bands to participate in Side-Line’s “Electronic Resistance” mastodont release which raised money for aid towards Ukraine. A band to follow for sure!

Here’s the download on Bandcamp.

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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Driven by István Gazdag the Hungarian Electro project First Aid 4 Souls remains a prolific and top notch formation. For the new album “I Am The Night” –released by Alfa Matrix, István renewed the experience working with his compatriot ‘Mortum’ as vocalist. The main difference with previous productions, which were often driven by sophisticated EBM influences, is the evolution in sound. First Aid 4 Souls injected, heavy, epic/orchestral, arrangements to the sound resulting in a heavy, bombastic work. The music creates a perfect match with the conceptual theme of the album around paintings from different international artists. “I Am The Night” is a Soundtrack for these painting.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: First Aid 4 Souls is now active for 15 years. You released multiple productions so can you draw up the balance sheet of the past 15 years? What have been the highlights and biggest deceptions?

István: We’ve started at the apex, thanks to the legendary publisher Some Bizarre, publishing us with a double CD back in 2008. I’ve had the opportunity  to mix bands like Coil, Soft Cell, Cabaret Voltaire, Swans, Test Dept, Einstürzende Neubauten or Depeche Mode on the second CD. 

Our album “Deathstep” was also a big hit, and our latest joint work with Mortum (Human Vault) entitled “I Am The Night” is considered a great success within the industry.

In the name of being unpredictable we’ve published a Psy-Rock album, full of real guitar riffs and old-school sci-fi tones. This however, caught no one’s attention.

Q: Your newest album “I Am The Night” is a particular conceptual work which seems to be a Soundtrack for paintings from different artists, right? How did you get the idea of this concept and how did you manage the different stages from the choice of the paintings till the music?

István: Back in the days I was aiming to become an art historian; I’ve had forty conscious years of picking the right pictures. Amongst the main themes are manly attitude, and a darker viewpoint of our world.

Tracks are recomposing the original paintings to the smallest details. Light, bound to canvas, can morph back into vibration this way.

Q: You already experienced working with concepts and artistic themes (like “Keep This World Empty”). What makes a conceptual release that exciting and what means ‘arts’ to you -and especially during the lockdowns where people were no longer allowed to cultural events?

István: These days, culture is not a trendy call-sign. One can only rebel against apathy and ignorance through action. A higher level of this is ‘total art’, where high culture is a starting point in composing.

People are generally devoid of all presence, being in lockdown or not. COVID did not change much about this.

Q: “I Am The Night” also brings a different approach in sound which is clearly driven by Epic/Orchestral arrangements. What have been the main sources of inspiration and references to produce this work? And did you notice important changes/evolutions in the global writing process?  

István: Will, Coil, Laibach or the In The Nursery are all fantastic when it comes to harmony and Kevin Key is still an in exhaustive source of inspiration to me.

Nowadays symphony can fit on a pendrive. This  helps a tremendous amount when it comes to creating the euphony by producers.

Q: A few years ago now you signed to Alfa Matrix. Do you notice and experience major differences being signed to a leading label? And what do you expect from labels today?

István: Alfa Matrix represents a status for us. Being an important company, financial accounting is much more manageable. 

Underground publishers are fighting for their survival these days. Promotion may be better with them, but soon enough these stars will fade…

Q: You also started to re-release ‘older’ productions revealing ‘reworked’ songs. Does it mean you weren’t satisfied with the original recordings and do you see yourself as a perfectionist? What did you try to improve?

István: In the past ten years my knowledge of mastering and audio techniques have massively improved. Yes, I’m a perfectionist, and I have a strong inner drive to be able to roar louder and more effectively.

No one can tell that we haven’t said it enough times; there is trouble ahead…

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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Einstürzende Neubauten guitarist is to release “Tier Macht Töne” (“Animal Makes Sounds”), a 3-track album recorded using homemade instruments and others made by Sonic Youth guitar builder Yuri Landman. He now shares the first single with Sonja Kosche, “Trauma”, today.

About the album, Arbeit says: “A long while ago one day in forced Isolation, detached from time and space, something broke free that was asleep before. Reduced to the minimum vital functions of life a Tier awoke from which all Schmerz and Lust broke free, in which old Trauma were hidden inside way too long. It spoke in Toene the stories it had to tell of loneliness but also from interactions that led to reactions that not always were agreed upon, rarely harmonic, but that found themselves in a We with special value. Old images broke free like a suppressed madness from a thicket and showed an exhaustion but also a force and strength that was vividly perceptible. How can one describe what is not describable when two meet. The one who was inside the Berlin Music Scene for decades with knowledge that seemed obvious and the other who made music a long time ago but lost herself for decades and did not trust to express herself from fear what could come up with it and emerge. It stays hard to describe.”

And he adds: “Nothing was planned or predictable. The forced isolation because of the pandemic gave urgently needed time to develop something special and precious. The music expresses emotions that were hidden in the dark and finally broke free and told not only from old despair and not overcome trauma but also brought strength, satisfaction, peace and calm that you can try to feel inside the screeching-oppressive and nearly screaming tones. When we could we sat down to generate sound with self made instruments, developed a dialog that words could not tell.This was finally a motor which kept us alive, a dynamic that functions in the moment, spontaneously without thinking.”

Check the single 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!

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The German industrial avant garde act Einstürzende Neubauten has just announced that they have decided to perform their multiple postponed “Alles in Allem” tour this year as “The Year Of The Tiger Tour 2022”, the year of the rat and ox already being postponed thanks to Covid 19.

And this “in spite of the difficult ongoing situation in which we all still find ourselves and the current, unbelievably sad developments that have recently been added” referring to the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

In a message the bands says that they “believe that another postponement is unacceptable, we truly want to see our fans again, and we want and need to experience your reactions directly, we need feedback ‒ that’s why we became musicians!”

Below are all the dates. More info on the band’s website.

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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Out on March 25th is the all new album, “Perpetual Skip”, by London-based minimal synth, industrial electronics artist Kevin Hendrick aka Middex. Next to a download the new 10-track album comes as a limited edition white label 12 inch on Outer Reaches.

Originally from Middlesex and now based in East London, Hendrick inaugurated the Middex project in 2015, following stints in post-punk groups including Male Bonding and Primitive Parts. More recently, Hendrick has joined the ranks of punk outfit Adulkt Life, while focusing predominantly on solo material.

After releasing a series of cassettes and one-off 7”s for The Tapeworm and Polytechnic Youth, Middex unveiled the project’s debut album “No Home” in 2018, before returning to The Tapeworm in 2019 for “Scrutiny”, a cassette of solo works and collaborative experiments featuring Lindsay Corstorphine (Sauna Youth, Monotony, Oblate).

Fans of John Bender and early Einstürzende Neubauten should like this release.

Below is Middex’ official video for “Palm is Alive in a Hand that Can Crush”.

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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Out on December 14th via Re:Mission Entertainment is the album “The Camel Corps and Other Stories” by the experimental / industrial duo Jochen Arbeit and Mark Spybey. You will know Jochen Arbeit from his work with Einstürzende Neubauten and Automat, while Mark Spybey has been active with Dead Voices On Air and Download. Among others that is.

Mark was introduced to Jochen via Robin Rimbaud of Scanner. Mark then invited Jochen to contribute to a collaborative project whereby he teamed with various friends to create a number of 7 inch singles. The single was never released but the pair enjoyed the experience enough to go on to record enough material for a full length album.

That was back in 2011. Ten years elapsed before they talked about releasing it.

Mark explains: “Ten years seems like a lot of time and I guess it is. I can recall that we felt that the best way of finishing the album was for me to either send Jochen the project files so that he might do some of the finished mixes or that, preferably, I go to Berlin to spend time with him finishing up the project. In the end I guess life and experiences just took over and we didn’t manage to get together. Earlier this year I listened to the mixes, which I really liked and sent them to Jochen with a suggestion that we release the album, as is. Thankfully he agreed!”

Most of the material on “The Camel Corps and Other Stories” was assembled from sounds that Jochen sent to Mark: fractured rhythms, and textured processed guitars.

You can pre-order it already on Bandcamp.

About Jochen Arbeit

Jochen Arbeit moved to Berlin in 1980 and became part of the arts collective Geniale Dilettanten. In 1983 he joined the
instrumental band Die Haut, and recorded and toured extensively.

In 1997 he joined Einzturzende Neubaten and is still an integral part of this legendary band. His other projects include Automat, The Jever Mountain Boys, Alert!, Abq, Martin Dean, Richard Ruin, Latin Lovers and the arts project Stupid Green. He has collaborated with people such as Scanner, TM Schneider and members of Larsen.

About Mark Spybey

Mark Spybey started his career briefly working with Zoviet:France, before forming Dead Voices on Air and joining Download with members of Skinny Puppy whilst living in Vancouver. He was a member of Can guitarist Michael Karoli’s band, Sofortkontakt!

Over the years he has collaborated extensively with a wide variety of artists such as Damo Suzuki, Martin Atkins, Jarboe and works with ex-Zoviet:France member Robin Storey, from the band Rapoon in the project Reformed Faction.

He now lives in the north of England.

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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(Photo by Chris Carter) Out on 28 January 2022 via The Grey Area (Mute) is the reissue of the 1979 album “The Bridge” by Thomas Leer And Robert Rental. This new reissue will be available on limited edition white vinyl and CD, both featuring new sleevenotes.

The reissue of Leer and Rental’s sole collaboration will coincide with “From The Port To The Bridge”, an exhibition detailing the duo’s work and legacy, due to run at The Horse Hospital in London from 21 January through to 10 February 2022.

Discovered by Throbbing Gristle

Thomas Leer and Robert Rental, both from Port Glasgow in Scotland, were at the vanguard of a DIY electronic scene that went on to influence and inform the 80s synth-pop movement. After self-releasing two solo 7” singles, they came to the attention of Throbbing Gristle and signed to their label, Industrial Records. Their one and only collaboration, “The Bridge”, was originally released in 1979, the first non-TG / associated release for the label.

Recorded at Rental’s home over two intense weeks using equipment provided by Throbbing Gristle (with only rudimentary explanation of how to use it), their album was cited by a number of electronic musicians at the time, including John Foxx, Matt Johnson (The The) and ABC.

Listen to “Monochrome Days”.

The late Robert Rental retired from the music industry

Robert Rental (who sadly died in 2000), went on to collaborate with The Normal – Daniel Miller and Rental’s live album, “Live at West Runton Pavilion, 6-3-79”, was released in 1980 by Rough Trade. Rental also released a single on Mute, “Double Heart” / “On Location” in 1980 and produced music for the Comic Strip’s “A Fistful of Traveller’s Cheques”, before retiring from the industry.

Thomas Leer continued to release music

Thomas Leer went on to release albums on Cherry Red and Arista, formed Act with Claudia Brücken (formerly of Propaganda) in the late 80s who released on Trevor Horn’s ZTT label. After a hiatus, he re-emerged with a series of releases from 2001, and currently lives in Greenock.

About The Grey Area

The Grey Area was founded in 1990 to restore and reissue albums by important and influential artists, initiated by catalogue deals between Mute and Throbbing Gristle, Can and Cabaret Voltaire.

The label went on to be the home for the catalogues of DAF, Virgin Prunes, SPK, Swell Maps, Dome, The Radiophonic Workshop and The Hafler Trio as well as key early works by Wire, Buzzcocks and Einstürzende Neubauten.

Dormant for a few years during the 2000s, The Grey Area emerged again quietly in 2013 with the re-release of Cabaret Voltaire’s Virgin period work, Richard H. Kirk’s solo work, the Sandoz catalogue and a new agreement with Throbbing Gristle.

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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Hackedepicciotto – Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten / Crime & the City Solution) and Danielle de Picciotto (co-founder of Love Parade / Crime & the City Solution) – have shared the video for their new track, “Kirchhain”, the latest to be taken from their forthcoming album, “The Silver Threshold”, coming out on Mute Records.

“The Silver Threshold” is the band’s 3rd album after “Menetekel” and “Joy” (with Eric Hubel and Vincent Signorelli) both released in 2018.

You can watch the video for “Kirchhain” 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!

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(Photo by Joe Dilworth) Out 10 December 2021 is the 20th anniversary reissue of “Sex O’Clock”, the second album by the late Anita Lane who has been Nick Cave’s musical muze for over a decade. Mute will reissue this studio album for the first time on vinyl.

The album was initially released in 2001 and work began with Anita Lane on the reissue before her untimely passing earlier this year, at the age of 61. Recorded with long time musical partner, Mick Harvey, the album was the final release in a solo career that began in 1988 with the release of the “Dirty Sings” EP.

Emerging from Melbourne’s post-rock scene, Anita Lane was one of the co-founders of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, co-writing “From Her To Eternity”, the title track of their debut album and “Stranger than Kindness” from “Your Funeral… My Trial”. Arriving in London in 1980 with The Birthday Party, she’s credited with co-writing several of their tracks – “A Dead Song”, “Dead Joe” and “Kiss Me Black” before re-locating to Berlin.

In Berlin she developed a series of collaborations that included work with Einstürzende Neubauten, Chrislo Haas, Gudrun Gut and Die Haut, a cover of “These Boots Were Made for Walking” with Barry Adamson and vocals for Mick Harvey’s first two Serge Gainsbourg albums, “Intoxicated Man” and “Pink Elephants”.

Check out “Home Is Where the Hatred Is”.

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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(Photo by Sven Marquardt) Hackedepicciotto, the project of Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten / Crime & the City Solution) and Danielle de Picciotto (co-founder of Love Parade / Crime & the City Solution), have announced details of their first album for Mute, “The Silver Threshold”, expected to be out on 12 November.

Out now is the duo’s first song, “Evermore”, a lovesong. Watch the video, directed by Studio Bergfors, right below.

The album cover and press photographs were shot by Sven Marquardt – a Berlin photographer – who also happens to be the doorman at the infamous Berghain nightclub. Hacke explains: “It was a very formative aspect of this album. He only uses natural light and having our picture taken by him was a very special experience.”

“The Silver Threshold” is the band’s 3rd album after “Menetekel” and “Joy” (with Eric Hubel and Vincent Signorelli) both released in 2018.

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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(Photo by Our Silent Canvas Records) Out now is “A Walk in the Woods”, the second album from Nous Alpha (Gareth Jones & Christopher Bono). “A Walk In The Woods” is the follow up to the Nous Alpha 2019 debut, “Without Falsehood”, and is according to the duo “a collaboration with the natural world through the lens of modern music technology, with natural elements created by performing with found objects in the dense woods of the nearby Catskill Mountains and around the Our Silent Canvas studio”.

Nous Alpha was formed a few years ago when Christopher asked Gareth to help mix two tracks for his project Ghost Against Ghost, which appeared on the 2017 album “Still love”. Nous Alpha exist as a parallel to NOUS, Christopher’s loose collective of diverse players with improvisation as its cornerstone.

You can check the new album below. In case you didn’t know, Gareth Jones is an English music producer and engineer notable for working with Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten, Wire and Erasure.

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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Out now is Laura Carbone’s newest single “Nightride” which was recorded live at the Rockpalast in 2019. This live single version of “Nightride” celebrates the official North American physical release of Laura Carbone’s latest album, “Laura Carbone – Live at Rockpalast”, recorded in October of 2019 on the heels of her September “Empty Sea” tour of the US and Canada, and only a couple of months before the unforeseen dystopian boredom and paralysis of lockdown.

The live video footage is from the same concert, simulcast nationwide and across Europe on TV and online worldwide on Germany’s prestigious Rockpalast live music television show, that in the past has documented monumental performances by The Police, Sonic Youth, Einstürzende Neubauten, and so on. The bootleg fans out there will surely know this.

The additional footage was realised in June 2021 in a forest outside Berlin by Laura and her longtime partner in graphics and video crime, The Underground Youth drummer and graphic artist Olya Dyer. You will also recognize Olya’s husband Craig Dyer, singer and frontman of The Underground Youth.

After the the limited first edition, which sold out immediately on release, “Live at Rockpalast” will be available again later in the year, in a limited second pressing.

Here’s Laura Carbone’s “Nightride (Live at Rockpalast)” video.

About Laura Carbone

Laura Carbone is a 34-year old German / Italian composer, singer , songwriter and photographer who began her musical career as a singer of the NDW – punk band Your Youth.

In 2014 her first solo EP and single “Stigmatized” was released followed in 2015 by her first solo album, “Sirens”. In 2017 she toured Germany with The Jesus and The Mary Chain. The album “Empty Sea” was released in June 2018 with Aporia Records (Toronto) and Duchess Box Records.

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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BArTc is a London based experimental electronic one-man project (Jason Barton). Out in September is the project’s debut full length “Insubstantial As Ghosts” containing 14 dark atmospheric soundscapes. ICR owner Colin Potter, himself a well known figure in the experimental genre as a member of Nurse With Wound and sound engineer, heard some of Barton’s work and offered to release it. He has handpicked several of the pieces included on “Insubstantial As Ghosts” and also mastered the album.

Initially inspired by instrumental electronic records in his father’s record collection by titans such as Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Barton soon gravitated towards underground industrial icons such as Coil, Einstürzende Neubauten, Chris & Cosey and Skinny Puppy, as well as digging deeper into the work of early German electronicists such as Cluster, Musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, plus the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Barton has cited sound recordist (and Cabaret Voltaire co-founder) Chris Watson as another influence, adding: “I have always loved environmental sounds and often carry a field recorder on my travels which I use to create texture in my pieces. I build layers to create something abstract yet strangely beautiful, mixing source material, organic and experimental sounds plus field recordings that are heavily distorted with various effects. For me, creating music is a form of meditation, and to lose oneself in an improvisation is a wonderful experience. I just need to remember to hit record!”

Much of “Insubstantial As Ghosts” was recorded in January 2021 while the UK was in lockdown. Barton: “I participated in an annual Instagram music making challenge, where artists post a short piece of music every day using the hashtag #jamuary2021. Recording my contributions at the same time every evening (22:23), I amassed many minutes of music and ideas. Some of these were expanded to become tracks for the album or inspired further recordings through the dark winter nights.”

Check out the 3rd track on the album: “Malleus Incuss Tapes”

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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(Photo by Renaud De Foville) The French post-punk band Versari are due to release a remix EP of the album track “Brûle”. The EP includes the track in its original post-punk incarnation, along with a remix by Gareth Jones (Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten, Wire, Erasure), Erica Nockalls (The Wonder Stuf) as well as by School Daze who remixed the album track “Des Images”.

“Brûle” is taken from the album “Sous la Peau”, an album also featuring Adrian Utley (Portishead) on guitar. Utley also produced Versari’s debut album “Ostinato”. You can check the new single below on Bandcamp where you can also buy a limited CD version.

Formed in 2003, Versari are comprised of Jean-Charles Versari (vocals/guitar) former Sloy member Cyril Bilbeaud (drums) and former Candie Prune member Laureline Prod’home (bass/backing vocals).

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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(Photo by Richard Dumas) Electronica wizzard Yann Tiersen has shared a new video for the latest track to be taken from his forthcoming album, “Kerber” – out on Mute on 27 August 2021. He has also announced details of worldwide tour dates, starting later this year in North America with shows in Europe confirmed for 2022.

Directed by Murat Gökmen, the live session video for ‘Poull Bojer’ depicts the interplay between the electronics and the source material on the album, with manipulations of Tiersen beamed back on screens throughout The Eskal studio. The Eskal studio is the studio he built on Ushant (the island where he lives, located 30 kilometres off the West coast of Brittany in the Celtic Sea).

The new album “Kerber” marks a new chapter in the Breton artist’s work, offering his most electronic material to date. On the new album, the piano is the source, “but electronics are the environment that they exist within” so Tiersen explains. “You may get this intuitive thinking of, ‘oh it’s piano stuff’, but actually it’s not. I worked on piano tracks to begin with but that’s not the core of it, they are not important. The context is the most important thing – the piano was a precursor to create something for the electronics to work around.”

After spending the spring writing the piano parts, he went on to spend that summer meticulously creating a sample bank for the Elektron Octatrack using these parts as inspiration, following the chord progressions, playing them on instruments such as the Ondes Martenot, mellotron and harpsichord. These were then subsequently transformed, reshaped and processed. What then followed, with producer Gareth Jones (Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten), was three weeks of working with electronics, sampling, re-sampling and processing sounds to create an engulfing soundscape where the tender tones of piano keys merge with gently pulsing electronics and an intense ambient milieu.

“Kerber” will be preceded by a book of sheet music on 20 July published by Hal Leonard. The folio will feature all seven pieces presented for solo piano, with preface by Tiersen.

Live concerts

Yann Tiersen is planning a live event to be broadcast worldwide from Ushant and the island is further represented on the graphic artwork by LA-based artist, Katy Ann Gilmore.

But he will also be touring live. Here are the dates.

2021 – North American Tour

• 9 Nov – Los Angeles, CA The Fonda Theatre
• 10 Nov – Berkeley, CA The UC Theatre
• 12 Nov – Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom
• 13 Nov – Vancouver, BC Vogue Theatre
• 14 Nov – Seattle, WA Neptune
• 17 Nov – Chicago, IL Metro
• 18 Nov – Detroit, MI Crofoot Ballroom
• 19 Nov – Toronto, ONT Phoenix Concert Hall
• 20 Nov – Montreal, QUE MTelus
• 22 Nov – Quebec City, QC Le Capitole
• 23 Nov – Boston, MA Berklee Performance Center
• 26 Nov – Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Steel
• 27 Nov – Washington, DC 930 Club

2022 – European Tour

• 29 Jan – Stockholm, SE Filadelfia
• 30 Jan – Gothenburg, SE Tradgarn
• 31 Jan – Copenhagen, DK Opera House
• 1 Feb – Malmo SE Concert House
• 2 Feb – Hamburg, DE, Laeizhalle
• 4 Feb – Berlin, DE Tempodrom
• 7 Feb – Milan, IT Teatro degli Arcimboldi
• 9 Feb – Dusseldorf, DE Tonhalle
• 10 Feb – Brussels, BE Cirque Royale
• 12 Feb – London, UK Roundhouse
• 14 Feb – Glasgow, UK Royal Concert Hall
• 15 Feb – Manchester, UK Bridgewater Hall
• 18 Feb – Roubaix (near Lille), FR Le Colisee
• 19 Feb – Strasbourg, FR La Laiterie
• 20 Feb – Dijon, FR La Vapeur
• 22 Feb – Montpellier, FR Le Corum
• 23 Feb – Toulouse, FR Le Bikini
• 24 Feb – Biarritz, FR La Gare du Midi
• 25 Feb – Bordeaux, FR Krakatoa
• 26 Feb – La Rochelle, FR La Sirene
• 28 Feb – Tours, FR Le Grand Theatre
• 1 March – Clermont-Ferrand, FR Cooperative de Mai
• 2 March- Rouen, FR Le 106

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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(Photo by John Fisher) Breton artist Yann Tiersen has announced details of a new album and also shared a taste of what to expect with the first track, “Ker al Loch”. A video for the single was directed by Sam Wiehl (Mogwai, Forest Swords) and can be seen below. The new album, “Kerber”, is set for release August 27 on Mute.

The new album is the follow up to 2019’s “Portrait” which was a collection of 25 newly recorded tracks from throughout his career. Small detail, “Kerber” is named after a chapel in a small village on the island and each track is tied to a place mapping out the immediate landscape that surrounds Tiersen’s home.

Regarding the sound Tiersen reveals the following: “You may get this intuitive thinking of, ‘oh it’s piano stuff,’ but actually it’s not. I worked on piano tracks to begin with but that’s not the core of it, they are not important. The context is the most important thing – the piano was a precursor to create something for the electronics to work around.”

Working in The Eskal, the studio he built on Ushant (the island where he lives, located 30 kilometers off the West coast of Brittany in the Celtic Sea), Tiersen was joined by producer Gareth Jones (Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten) to finish the tracks.

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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In 1982 the UK electronic outfit Attrition released “This Death House”, a dark ambient soundtrack, spread over two long tracks: “Crawling” (23:22) and “Dead Of Night” (22:49). This iconic album now gets a re-release on vinyl and download to celebrate it’s 40th anniversary year. Included with the vinyl is a free poster.

Released on the Russian label Other Voices “This Death House” will also be available on all streaming services from April 30th on.

The line-up for this released consisted of Martin Bowes (Electronic drums/Synthesizer & production), Ashley Niblock (Synthesizer and Keyboards) and Richard Woodfield (Synthesizers). The whole was remastered by Martin Bowes at the Cage, Coventry, England last year. The artwork for this re-issue was executed by Oleg Galay.

You can check out the album below.

Also out soon in May is a new single and video, “The Alibi” taken from the all new album for this year, “The Black Maria”. More on that when it happens.

About Attrition

In 1979, Martin Bowes started a xeroxed fanzine called Alternative Sounds to document the Coventry music scene (including such notables as The Specials and Furious Apples). The fanzine ran for 18 issues until 1981, and culminated in a vinyl compilation, “Sent from Coventry” (on Cherry Red) and a brief appearance on the BBC’s Something Else programme. During this time, Martin met Julia at a local gig and, with the addition of Martin’s brother Chris on guitar, Attrition was formed. In 1980 Chris was replaced by Julia’s brother Ashley Niblock on synthesizer, and a short time later they replaced their live drummer with a drum machine

Musically the band emerged from the experimental post-punk scene of the early 1980s and, along with other groups such as Throbbing Gristle, Coil, Einstürzende Neubauten, and In the Nursery, greatly contributed to the development of industrial music in the UK.

Drones and tape manipulations released under the title “Death House” prefigured dark ambient by almost 10 years, while the group’s first two proper albums, “The Attrition of Reason” and “Smiling at the Hypogonder Club” set the tone for the style now known as darkwave.

A band which has never ceased to produce new material and as such one of the few still active today along The Cure and related bands who all coloured the early days of the post-punk movement pitch black.

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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(By our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange) The crowd funding project ‘Norske albumklassikere på CD’ (‘Norwegian Album Classics on CD’) is a series of CDs whose purpose is reissuing music that either never has been released on CD or is hardly available on CD anymore. The project is enjoying a success beyond all expectations these days. The concept is this: always having 20 albums in the crowd funding pool, and when an album goal is reached it can be purchased at the main website norskealbumklassikere.no. The public Facebook group for the project, which recently passed 11.000 members, have a constant flow of suggestions and discussions among the members.

There’s also a similar project for LPs in the works, and 20 albums are at the present being decided and published daily until the launch May 9^th.

We got more background info from one of the main two founders, Christer Falck, who early on in last year’s mid-March corona lock-down quickly became restless and started the concert streams series ‘Koronerulling‘ the very next week. 83 artists/bands was able to stream their concerts the following year, ended up getting 4.5 mill NOK in well-deserved and much needed donations.

Side-Line: How and when did the idea for ‘Norwegian Album Classics’ surface?

Christer Falck: I was doing some promotional phone calls to the local press when I was releasing the 20 CD-box set by Jahn Teigen, and one of the most enthusiastic journalists in Norway, Erik Munsterhjelm at Tønsberg Blad, asked me if I could release a box set by one of his childhood heroes, The Kids, as well. Since they had only released two albums, I thought the idea of a box set was a bit too ambitious, but then the idea came to me. Releasing all the good records that had only been available on LP and MC – on CD. Not just one record, but a lot of them. I called my 5-6 most nerdy friends, and asked them to make a list of the 50 albums they miss in their CD-collections. My partner John Richard loved the idea, and the funny thing is that the lists that I received were almost identical. I thought “when 6 people, so different from each other manages to make almost equal lists, it has to be a market out there”.
This, combined with my fetish for crowdfunding, made me do a website with my crowdfunding-partners bidra.no, where 20 records should be on display. Each record should get 30 days to be financed, if 150 people pre-order it, I will produce the record. If we don’t reach goal, they will all get their money back.

One month after the idea came, we started. Now we have made 90 albums in 100 days.

S-L: How successful do you consider this to have been so far?

CF: It depends how you measure success. As a cultural experiment, I’d say it’s a huge success. A lot of records that aren’t available on streaming services are now available, remastered and with much better sound quality than ever. A lot of CD-enthusiasts can join our little group on Facebook and suggest their favourite records, and I think we have managed to create a cool platform, where everyone respects each other’s musical taste. If they don’t, we throw them out, so they don’t have a choice ?
Financially, I think I could have found a lot of different jobs that would pay much better off, but at least I have something to do, these Covid-19-times. The alternative was to not arrange festivals, that’s my real job.

S-L: What has surprised you the most so far? Any weird album suggestions, the involvement of members, the process itself, other things?

CF: I know some much more about Norwegian music now than three months ago. I have a short list with 1700 titles on Norwegian albums. From easy listening to hardcore and punk records I’d never heard of before. And everything in the middle. But what I like with the concept, is that since we just need to find 150 buyers, nothing is too weird and strange. A Christian choir-album from the South of Norway or a heavy metal album from Finnmark – 150 people will probably find their way. The job is to expand the target group, so that the next album in the same will have the same opportunity to be financed. And the good part with our group, some of the members are doing the job for us. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I’ve had a lot questions in our forum, and then some of the members have explained and solved all the problems for us. It would be impossible to do all the things that we do now AND do a great customers service too. So far we haven’t got any too weird suggestions, but a guy started a homophobic thread where he “Loved our series, but hated the “pride”-logo on our CD’s”. This was the most read and commented post so far, and 100% of our members made this person probably never post something like that again. I love the self-justice that the group is creating. Usually, when 11-12.000 people are gathered together, at least 1-2 % is fucking up for many of the others. But here, fucking up is very uncool. That’s probably what I’m most happy with.

S-L: As I write this there’s just weeks or days until the 100^th album is financed. How do you see the future of this project – is there an end, or does it have the potential to continue indefinitely?

CF: Well, I have 1700 records on my list. And there are still a lot of records being added every day. I’m not going to stop, but this concept will die by itself. It’s impossible to keep up the speed that we’ve have had so far. Both for us, but also for the buyers. Just too expensive. So hopefully, we will end up producing 2.3 records a week. Then my wife and kids will be happy too, ‘cause this takes all of my time. But it’s all a huge labour of love, so I hope it will last many more months.

SL: How is the interest outside of Norway for this project – are there many foreigners among the customers?

CF: We see that some of the genres are more popular outside Norway than others. Jazz, prog and Norwegian west coast music, has a huge standing abroad. One of the most selling records so far is Moose Loose – a jazz/fusion/prog band who hardly sold records at their peak. My goal is to sell more of their records in 2021 than they did in the 70’s.

Another major contributor on this project is Arvid Skancke-Knutsen; music journalist, author, musician and quiz master, who have contributed with lot’s of input and suggestions, but also liner notes on the CD releases. I thought it would be interesting to get an historical view on projects like these, and who better than to get from than a Historical Consultant at Rockheim, Norway’s National Museum of Popular Music?

S-L: In all your years in the music industry and press, have you ever seen a project accomplishing so much in such a short time?

Arvid Skancke-Knutsen: No, this is pretty amazing, and I am very proud to be a part of it. We have now realized 90 albums in just 100 days – with very few signs of the project slowing down. What we have achieved is certainly a Norwegian and Scandinavian record. There might have been other projects similar to this, somewhere in the world, but I cannot think of any offhand. A commercial music series like Absolute Music ended up with a total of 64 record releases, but that took them 23 years. We have done this in mere three months – at a point in history where CD sales are plummeting. 

The success of our series is basically down to just a few factors, I think. Firstly, the genuine enthusiasm of Christer Falck and John Richard Stenberg, the two founders of the project. Their enthusiasm spilled over to Norwegian record companies and artists. And especially to our 11, 000 members on Facebook, who have been very supportive all the way. The rest is about hard work, and making sure that the quality is as good as it gets.

S-L: How will this and similar projects “born” in the year(s) of corona influence music industry in the future?

ASK: Good question! I think that online concerts might have a future, even beyond the pandemic. It’s all about good logistics and excellent production values. If those elements are present, fans of bands and music genres will be willing to pay for it.

The corona situation has been a terrible worldwide event, but we still might be able to take away some creative solutions from it. I wrote a book, dealing with the pandemic in Norway, and its impact on the Norwegian music scene. And what struck me more than anything else was the amount of creativity going on.

S-L: What your best moments/highlight of this project?

ASK: The sheer amount of records that we have brought into existence in a very short time, while maintaining high production values. And the fact that the series is not just limited to one musical style, or merely the most popular artists. It’s really a history ride through Norwegian music, covering all sort of styles, fashions and creativity over a span of sixty years. Another personal highlight is the fact that I pick a cult classic every month or so, showcasing some of the strangest music ever recorded in Scandinavia.

Check out Arvid’s book ‘Da musikken stilnet’ – loads of pictures from corona restricted concerts (by Per Ole Hagen), and essays from musicians and others in the music business influenced by the lock-downs.

We also reached out to one of the projects most eager members and an oracle of Norwegian synth/electronic music/post punk ++: Per Aksel Lundgreen (Apoptygma Berzerk, Cronos Titan, Angst Pop, Chinese Detectives, Technomancer, Rossetti’s Compass and Shatoo) for tips about what foreigners should look for in this crowd funding project.

S-L: As one of the most active members of the Facebook group for this project, you have both suggested a lot of candidates for the crowd funding, and also shared and posted about your favorites in various groups all over. Which albums do you think Side-Line readers should consider getting their hands on?

Per Aksel Lundgreen: Yes, I’m a CD-man myself, having collected CD’s since I got my first CD-player from my aunt at my birthday in 1986, so when Christer Falck mentioned starting this project, I immediately contacted him and said that I would do my best to help out with promotion and pushing this project. Since this project also was started in the middle of the corona pandemic, it meant that I, and everybody else, had a lot of extra time on their hands, and so the ‘Norske Albumklassikere På CD’ has become a very welcome “distraction” and something that’s brought a lot of joy in a time that has been difficult for a lot of people, especially in the music business.

Anyhow, here’s some suggestions from my side, all depending on what your musical preferences are, but there’s some really great post-punk/new-wave/experimental/electronic/alternative stuff that has made it through here and that is already financed. (links in the titles)

Munch – ‘Excessive Mobility’: An amazing Norwegian classic that really deserved a CD release. They’re kinda the “Norwegian Einstürzende Neubauten” if you will, and if you like stuff like Shock Therapy, Polyphonic Size and Ledernacken, this album is definitively something for you. Most albums in this series are printed in 500 copies, but Munch insisted on only doing 300 copies, so this will be a collectors item very quickly too! 🙂

Garden Of Delight – ‘Big Wheels In Emotion’: Norway’s first real goth album, self-released in 1987 on vinyl only. They also did two great 7″ singles back in 1984 that never made it to the album, but the album itself is well worth checking out. Goth with female vocals and a touch of tuba, you’ve never heard that before, but you’ll love it!

Babij Jar – ‘Stalingrad’ and ‘The Night Before’: Two of Norway’s best hidden gems in the new-wave/post-punk genre. Went completely under the radar for people outside Norway, but had they had decent promotion and distribution back then, they could’ve made it really big.

Helge Gaarder – ‘Eine Keine Angst Musik’: Something as rare as a Norwegian art-rock/experimental/electronic album. Impossible to describe, must be experienced. The original LP will set you back at least EUR 120 and you find none of the music on YouTube or digital distribution. Very happy that this finally gets a CD release and the credit it deserves. Too bad Helge Gaarder died 17 years ago, so he never got to see this album being included in this classics series. 

Plann – ‘Elektra Elektra’: One of very few minimal-wave albums from Norway, and a great one too! Quirky songs, haunting vocals, amazing synth sounds. Several songs can be found on YouTube if you want to check it out. Listen to “Cadillac”, “Sug”, “Ato Signal” and “Cherokee” which also was the single from the album. The original LP will set you back some EUR 140, so unless you’re a rich vinyl freak, I suggest you get the CD to enjoy this rarity.

Boastein – ‘Urgata Hurgata’: A Norwegian new-wave/kraut-rock inspired album, with repetitive drumming, charming synth sounds and a very nice all over feel to it. Check out the songs “Helium”, “Seismisk Kollaps”, and “Khomeini’s Visjon” on YouTube. 

Ole I’Dole – ‘Blond Og Billig’: This album has become kind of an underground hit outside of Norway in the minimal-wave community because of the track “Space, Action, Sex & Blod”, which is pure synth heaven. The rest of the album is a bit more pop oriented, but the tracks “Framtidsskrekk” and “S.O.S.” are also really great tracks. Recommended listening indeed! 

Creation – ‘The Real Thing’: two of the guys from Drama, making very soft synthpop in the style of Shatoo and a-ha, but with a couple of really nice tracks on there, and especially the track “Don’t Do It”. If you’re into Norwegian/Scandinavian (synth)pop this will hit home with you for sure. 

Blind Date – ‘Don’t Talk’: Probably the closest you get to a Norwegian version of Psychedelic Furs, and this is a beautiful new-wave album with some really strong material on it! Check out the title track, “Don’t Talk” on YouTube, and if that is to your taste, then don’t hesitate to invest in this album!

There’s more goodies here of course, but the 10 albums above are my priority suggestions right now.
Also, currently there’s some other really great stuff still being crowdfunded:

Famlende Forsøk – ‘En Overraskende Måte Hvorpå Man Kan Kaste En Person Over Ende’: Norway’s equivalent to Throbbing Gristle, and their quirky synths, great programming and musical skills, mixed with dada elements and dadaistic lyrics/vocals, makes this super interesting. The full album can be enjoyed on streaming services, but really deserves a CD release. One of Norways most original and groundbreaking bands through all times!

PVC – ‘Emile Berliner’: A superb post-punk band that released two albums in the early 80’s. Bitten Forsudd later went on to join/fund Garden Of Delight mentioned above, and Eivind Rølles went on to form one of Norways most known pop duos, The Monroes. If you’re into Joy Division and The Residents, then this is music for you! 

Chrissy – ‘Chrissy’: Her single “Mark My Words” sold over 500.000 copies in Scandinavia and Germany combined, and is one of the best selling singles in Norway in all times, way up there with a-ha and Röyksopp. The music is a fantastic new-wave/power-pop combo with snappy synth lines on there too! Find the track ‘Mark My Words’ on YouTube to get an idea. This is the album that I’m currently most excited about getting fully funded! 

S-L:  I guess you have a long wish list of albums not yet funded or suggested – wanna share? 😉

PAL: Yes, absolutely, and one of the first posts I made in the Facebook group, was an invitation to have everybody post their Top 5 Want List of albums they wanted on CD, and so far, I’ve gotten one of these 5 realized, and that was Munch – “Excessive Mobility”.

The rest of my Top 5 looks like this:
– Holy Toy – ‘Pakt Of Fact’ (Their best album in my opinion!)
– E-Man – ‘E-Man’ (Pre-Biosphere project from Geir Jenssen – great minimal-wave)
– Susanne Sundfør – ‘A Night At Salle Pleyel’ (Beautiful electronica!)
– Ultra Sheriff – ‘Galactic Frame’ (Norway’s first ever synthwave album, only released digitally!)

Other Norwegian albums that I feel definitively belong in this series and that I know is on the list is:
– Thorbjørn Grønning – ‘Galskapens Teater’ (Amazing minimal-wave self-released album)
– Göbbels A-Go-Go – ‘Våre Problemer Er Rent Musikalske’ (Superb electronic/new-wave)
– Ultra Sheriff – ‘Deception, Oil And Laser Beams’ (Another amazing synthwave album from them!)
– Det Elektriske Kjøkken – ‘Elefantene Er Kommet’ (Superb electronic/new-wave album)
– Bearburger – ‘The Bearburger’ (Great electronic/experimental album!)
– A Place To Pray – ‘Disciplina Arcana’ (Amazing goth/electronic album!)
– PLX 15 – ‘Kort Prosess’ and ‘PLX 15’ (Two great experimental electronic albums!)
– Axis – ‘Axis’ (Superb Norwegian new-wave mini album!)

… and finally, maybe one of the most important ones, because of the extremely high quality of the album, and this should absolutely be more known outside of Norway:
– Lily & The Gigolos – ‘Secrets’: An album that sounds like a Norwegian Siouxsie & The Banshees, with super strong song material, great production and great artwork. Check out the track “Listen To The Radio”, “Russia” or “I’m Just A Child” on YouTube, and you’ll know what I mean.

The project in itself has now released 88 albums in 99 days through crowdfunding, and is the most successful and longest spanning series in Norwegian record industry history, which in itself is a great feat! ALL countries should have a project like this! Just think about Sweden, a country which haven’t even released the albums like NASA – ‘Power Of The Century’, or most albums by Secret Service and Freestyle on CD at all! I really hope that this Norwegian project will inspire others to do the same in their countries, because there’s so much music history out there, and if we want to keep it for later generations, it has to be done NOW, or it will never be done. The younger generation consumes music digitally, so it is up to us to get these master tapes digitized and onto a physical medium like a CD, so that they also can be used as masters for digital distribution later on. That’s not the first priority, but what label wouldn’t jump at the chance of getting paid for a physical license and also get a remaster they can use for digital distribution/streaming? This also means that a lot of these artists WON’T be forgotten, and that their music will live on to be discovered by others.

Also, a lot of people in the Facebook group for ‘Norske Albumklassikere På CD’ constantly discover new “old” acts/releases, and this is half the fun of being part of this. I mean, I started working in a record shop in the summer of 1985, and I’ve worked in the music business in one way or the other since then, as a DJ, on radio stations, playing in bands, fixing record fairs, selling stuff via mail-order, working at record companies, writing for music magazines etc etc. so I try to contribute the best I can, but even I discover new and exciting things through this project.

Nobody knows everything, and that’s one of the great charms of music, that you can discover a band from the 80’s you’ve never heard of that you totally love!

Search and order already financed albums here: https://norskealbumklassikere.no/
See and order albums being crowfunded now: https://www.bidra.no/norskealbumklassikere

Join the Facebook group for CDs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/norskealbumklassikere and/or LPs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/norskealbumklassikerelp

Jan Ronald Stange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

www.facebook.com/jrstange

(Interview by János Janurik) About a year ago, I had the honour to ask Gareth Jones about his studio work on Erasure’s legendary “Wild!” album. Back then he mentioned his upcoming solo electronic music project. The long wait is finally over. The studio magician’s long-awaited debut album will be released on the 18th September. On that occasion, I asked him my questions again.

SL: In our last conversation last year, you summarized your memories of working on Erasure’s “Wild!” album. The Erasure guys have just released their new album “The Neon”. At the online launch party they also mentioned your name concerning a new remix to “Nerves Of Steel”. Could you please tell us a few words about this project?

GJ: Andy had an idea for an approach to a remix, and I was delighted to help him realise that idea. It is a mix full of respect. It’s an homage in fact. I love Andy and Vince. It’s family.  It’s always amazing to work with them, so I jumped at the chance to collaborate on this remix.  I also created a second ElectroGenetic remix, which is a different kind of thing. Darker perhaps. 

SL: When we run back over the past and take a look at your massive CV, we can see that you have been active in the music biz for four decades. You were the sound engineer on John Foxx’s cult debut album from 1980. Do you remember how you got your first studio job?

GJ: A musician and record producer called Mike Finesilver owned a small 8 track studio in Newington Green called Pathway. He generously gave me a chance to work in his studio. Thank you Mike! I’m forever grateful.

SL: Your name is closely linked to the Hansa Studios in Berlin where you experimented with recording atmospheres and the method of sampling. In 2018 the film “By The Wall” was screened, which narrated as a kind of documentation what had happened musically in the Hansa Studios between 1976 and 1990. What are your most noteworthy experiences about these legendary Hansa times?

GJ: So many great musicians from whom I learned so much. Diamanda Galás, Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten, Adrian Sherwood, Ideal, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Conny Plank, Roma Baran, Daniel Miller, Fad Gadget, Palais Schaumburg, Wire, Holger Hiller, Crime and the City Solution. These are my teachers.

SL: Through your work with Depeche Mode, Erasure, Einstürzende Neubauten, and also with Nick Cave you have made a name for yourself among music producers. But your portfolio also includes younger artists and bands like Apparat, Wovoka Gentle, Compact Disk Dummies, and Polly Scattergood. Do you receive these requests for joint work directly from the newer generation of musicians? I mean, do they know you and your previous work well? And vice versa, do you have your finger on the pulse of contemporary pop music? Could you name some new pop artists who you think are exciting enough?

GJ: I do get approached directly and many of the younger generation know some of the amazing musicians I have worked with in the past. I don’t have my finger on the pulse. I’m a drifter. A feather on the breath of God.

SL: When I got the news about your solo album, I immediately got interested. I belong to the generation that not only appreciates albums of their favourite bands, but also the work of those who work in the production background. So you’ve always been a hero of mine. As I said, I was curious how this personal work would sound from you. How long have you been working on this album? What was the main motivation behind its creation?

GJ: I made a commitment to myself to complete an album in the year 2019. This personal contract with myself helped me to cross the finish line. I’ve been working on the album for 50 years. The motivation was not to let myself down.

SL: To what extent was this work different from your previous studio works on the albums of different artists? How did it feel for the first time being your own boss and that having an opportunity to realize your own ideas without compromise?

GJ: I really enjoy working with collaborators. And getting hired to work for other artists. One of the great things about it is that the person you are working with always inspires you and pushes you forward. My ELECTROGENETIC project is a solo work, so I was stuck alone with myself (and my dreams and fantasies) and this meant that I had to inspire and encourage myself. Not always easy. I learnt a lot about the creative process, the joy and pain of commitment, and had to negotiate intensively with my inner critic in order to get anything done. Also, I acquired an even deeper understanding of the challenges that so many of my dear friends and colleagues have been through over the years in making their own music and art.

SL: The album title “Electrogenetic” can have several meanings. Through creation we, humans, are similar to God – at least for a certain period of time. I thought of something spiritual when I had a first look at the album cover. What about you? What were you trying to say with it? What`s behind the title and the cover?

GJ: With the title I am trying to express my feelings about the generative power of modular electronic synthesiser patches. Often, when working with modular synthesisers, we build a patch and it offers something beyond what we could imagine or expect. This certainly happens for me often and it is part of the deep power of the modular synth creative process. So in a sense the electronics give birth to the music, and I am a kind of midwife, a birth father to the process. I am trying to emphasise and echo this process in my choice of name: ELECTROGENETIC.

The ankh and the wedding ring in the photograph on the cover hang of a lamp over my desk where I write my journal and create music at home, so I see them every day and when I took a series of photographs of these powerful symbols I realised I had my album cover right there. The wedding ring was my father’s. The font that I use for ELECTROGENETIC is from an old fashion stencil that I found in the basement of my father-in-law’s house. I love the dirty analogue outlines of the font – it enhances and reflects my aesthetic and music.

SL: When I first listened to the album, I immediately got a “this is the kind of atmospheric electronic music with goose-skin effect I’ve long missed” thought. Everything is very poetic and the listener is immediately tied up. Where did your ideas, themes and musical expression come from to this work?

GJ: This is my first solo LP, so it probably contains images and feelings from my entire life, and it is inspired by everything I have experienced, so that would be a very long list! 

The album emerged because I made a commitment to myself to complete a project within that year. I found this to be a very powerful process, the contract with myself. I really wanted to honour that contract and this which drove me forwards to completion, to the finishing line. Also my mother and my mother-in-law had recently died (my father and father-in-law died some years before) so in some way everything changed. This experience distilled into the entire project. In some sense I hope it is a loving Requiem for my parents and all the ancestors, the four billion year chain of life that precedes me.

SL: It’s hard to choose “favourite tracks” from the album because it’s a coherent musical concept, but are there parts of the whole that are of very personal importance to you?

GJ: Every track on my LP connects to every other track. In some sense they’re all important to me, and in another sense it’s “all for nothing“ – supremely important, and completely insignificant at the same time. That’s my life. I hope some listeners will go the whole journey with me and listen to the LP from top to bottom, that is how it is designed to be listened to. And I hope you will enjoy the journey.

SL: The last thing I want to ask is about your collaboration with Daniel Miller under the pseudonym “Sunroof”. Your special performance of the Depeche Mode album “Construction Time Again” 10 years ago in Berlin attracted the attention of Depeche Mode fans. Just as popular are your joint remixes. Are there such works still to be expected from you? And what are your further plans for the near future?

GJ: “Sunroof” goes back many years now and I hope it will extend many years into the future. My musical relationship with Daniel is one of the great important relationships of my life and we have always enjoyed making music together, and I hope we always will. Watch this space!

For more information on ELECTROGENETIC, including Gareth’s notes on each track, visit the album website.

Track list: 

1. The Beginning 
2. Trinity 
3. Mercury 
4. Michigan 
5. Farewell 
6. Goonhilly 
7. Safe Travels 
8. I Believe 
9. Alone Together 

You can pre-order / buy the album on Bandcamp.

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.

Genre/Influences: Industrial, cinematographic.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: “Hammerschlag” is a conceptual work recorded live by FM Einheit (ex-Einstürzende Neubauten) and Andread Ammer (author and writer of radio plays). They got some assistance from several extra musicians and vocalists. The concept is based around Soviet revolutionary poet and futurist Aleksej Kapitonovič Gastev who got executed under the orders of Stalin. This concert took place in Perm (Russia) in 2019 and served as the basis for a German-Russian radio play version.

Content: Except the debut- and final song you don’t really get the feeling listening to a live concert. The global atmosphere and used equipment are rapidly reminding the early days of industrial music. The influence of Einstürzende Neubauten is for sure easily noticeable, but this work moves a step further/. You somewhere notice the conceptual approach and radio play format. The charismatic, narrating female vocals by Rica Blunck inject a bewitching effect to the work. This work has been accomplished by industrial noises, percussion and recycled material. Some of the tracks have a ritual touch on top, but other, more electronic passages have something very cinematographic.

+ + + : I’ve been always fascinated by the early industrial music scene from the 80s and this album reminds me of this magic period. Einstürzende Neubauten comes into mind, which I think is unavoidable, but I can also mention Test Department and Raksha Mancham for the engaged approach. Next to the typical industrial elements you’ll also notice great orchestral arrangements by wind instruments injecting a solemn touch to the work. The tracks are meticulously elaborated and diversified. There are multiple cool tracks, but I especially have to mention the debut- and final cut, which are simply outstanding.

– – – : I noticed a few parts, which are maybe too explicitly experimental, but you don’t hear me complaining.

Conclusion: This is an album bringing the true spirit of industrial music back alive. Respect for this great work!

Best songs: “Amoeba”, “Epilogue”, “Cit”, “Order 05”, “Order 08”.

Rate: (8½).

Artist: www.fmeinheit.org / www.facebook.com/FM-EINHEIT-266076520078649

Label: www.coldspring.co.uk / www.facebook.com/coldspringhq

About FM Einheit

FM Einheit, born Frank Martin Strauss, is a German musician known as the former percussionist for Einstürzende Neubauten, which he joined in 1981 and remained a member of for over a decade. “Hammerschlag” is a live conceptual work built around Soviet poet Aleksej Kapitonovič Gastev, recorded in Perm, Russia in 2019 together with radio-play author Andreas Ammer and narrated by Rica Blunck, formerly of the new wave and post-punk band Palais Schaumburg, who supported Depeche Mode on tour after Palais Schaumburg signed to Mute Records in 1981.

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 in September is “Where Does a Body End?”, an intimate portrait of the band Swans, from their roots as a brutal, confrontational post-punk band that emerged from the same early 1980s era NYC that gave us Sonic Youth (and, somehow, Madonna) through their ill-fated bid at mainstream success in the 90s indie-rock gold rush. You’ll also get a glimpse of the breakups and chaos (on and offstage), in short the whole package.

For this concert film the editor waded through hundreds of hours of Swans (and singer-songwriter Michael Gira’s) archives of never-seen-before recordings, videos, and photographs. “Where Does A Body End?” has enjoyed festival success around the world from Chicago Underground Film Festival, Doc N Roll Festival (London and several other UK cities), Cinemateket Music Film Festival (Copenhagen), In: Edit Festival (Barcelona), Taoyuan Film Festival (Taiwan), Pop Kultur (Berlin), Sydney Underground Film Festival, Dok Station Film Festival (Bucharest), LUFF Lausanne Underground Film Festival (Switzerland) and many others.

The cast for this concert film includes: Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Jehnny Beth (Savages), JG Thirlwell (Foetus), Blixa Bargeld (Einstürzende Neubauten), Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Kid Congo Powers (The Cramps / The Gun Club), Jim Sclavunos (The Bad Seeds), Daniel Miller (Mute Records), Steve Von Till (Neurosis), Dana Schechter (Angels Of Light), Devendra Banhart, Anna Von Hausswolff, Amanda Palmer, Ben Frost and Martin Bisi.

Below is a preview.

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

(Photo by Brigi Major) Veteran Hungarian artist István Gazdag joined the Alfa Matrix label in 2019 for the release of the dark EBM album “Keep This World Empty” (get it here on Bandcamp) which was recorded with his partner in crime Mortum on vocals. Gazdag has been very active in the avant-garde electronic / industrial scene since the late 80’s with numerous and quite diversified releases on various labels under his belt and some great remix work for such cult acts like Coil, Soft Cell, Test. Dept., Cabaret Voltaire or Einstürzende Neubauten.

On the new “Fire” album (available now from Bandcamp) you get a collaboration effort with several key-protagonists from the electro industrial scene in Hungary. As a result the release is released under the ‘First Aid 4 Souls feat. LD50’ named after the famous cult sub-culture community site LD50.hu where all the fans and artists in the country gathered. A bit like our legendary Side-Line forum (where trolling became kind of a sports we must admit).

But back to Hungary, the legacy of the LD50.hu forum van be found back on this 12-track album via studio collaborations with other Hungarian artists like Black Nail Cabaret’s dark pop diva Emke, Ultranoire’s singer Josef Stapel, provocative artist Vic Willow (and his voice evoking David Bowie and Gary Numan) or yet the writer/futurist Damage of Planetdamage.

The result is a mix of 80’s tainted moody electro wave with a dance floor edge and noir melancholic vocals. It also shows that the Hungarian dark wave scene is far from being dead, on the contrary. A daring yet very accessible release.

Check out this excellent release below, you can download it right now from Bandcamp!

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

Bedless Bones is the sonic brainchild of Estonian female artist Kadri Sammel. There isn’t an elaborate story behind the band name. As Kadri explains ‘I wanted to have a moniker for my solo project, that would evoke a certain unease and would have a murky undertone, and also an unexpected element – sort of like my music, I guess. I basically just needed a name to upload my first experimental / ambient tracks on SoundCloud. I didn’t really expect that it would develop much further from that, but now I am stuck with this name’. The debut album “Sublime Malaise” released on Cold Transmission Music is a refreshing piece of music inspired by dark-wave, cold-wave and a few more related genres. I talked about it all with Kadri Sammel.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: First things first, can you give us some brief background information how you got in touch with underground/electronic music and how did you come to set up Bedless Bones?

Kadri: I have always been drawn to alternative and underground stuff, ever since I consciously started listening to music. But I only ever got around to electronic music that I actually liked sometime in the second half of my teen years. Before that I was into punk, post-punk, alternative-rock. A massive change happened, when I started to visit Beats From The Vault party series here in Tallinn, led by Anders Melts, who later became my partner and bandmate in industrial/deathbeat band Forgotten Sunrise. Anders introduced me to an array of EBM and old-school industrial bands, black-metal, and lots of other obscure & unknown underground music. I had the urge to make my own music for years before, but it was then when I felt really inspired to start my solo project.

Q: Tell us a bit more about the sources of inspiration and possible influences plus the kind of sound you try to create?

Kadri: I never follow a sound, but rather a feeling, and a context in which a sound could be placed. It doesn’t excite me to mimic (or create) a style and then make all songs in that way. I like to see where the music takes me and experiment. I’d say all my songs sound a little different, but they have a certain atmosphere. Again, I usually don’t have direct references in mind while I write music, but now and then I hear things that trigger ideas. My conscious and unconscious inspirations have been Nick Cave, early Fever Ray,  Dead Can Dance, Einstürzende Neubauten, nighttime wanderings, my own experiences, people I’ve met, films I’ve seen, art, dreams and nightmares.

Q: You last year released your debut full length “Sublime Malaise”. The title has something intriguing, but what kind of album did you want to accomplish and how do you look back at the global production process?

Kadri: This is such a funny question to me, because I literally had no clue what I was doing. I recorded the album at home and my only goal was to find a label to release it in physical format, so I could show it to my parents -here is the reason and purpose of why I was wasting so much time on this music thing. I was lucky that Cold Transmission Music allowed me to fulfill my vision and put it out just like it was. They have also done all the work with promotion and sales.

Q: I noticed you already composed a new song/single (cf. “The Pyre”), which hasn’t been featured on the album. What is this song all about and do you notice main evolutions compared to “Sublime Malaise”?

Kadri: “The Pyre” is more like a breath in between, not an indicator of where my music is going. I have been surrounded by a lot of dance music recently, because I’ve been playing more as a DJ, so creating something slow, cinematic and quiet was a nice stopover. That is why I released it separately. It was written in the beginning of the virus quarantine and lockdown, so it has a reference to these times as well.

Q: You also have something with clips. The clips are dark and even somewhat tormented, but still artistic (cf.  “Limbs Entwined”). What do you want to express throughout the clips and is there a link with the lyrical content of the songs? 

Kadri: The visuals come as a reaction to the music, but I don’t follow the lyrics strictly, if at all. With “Limbs Entwined” I always envisioned bizarre movements of the body, and I developed the idea from that. Sometimes I want to have more narration in the visuals (like my first video for “True Devotion”), and sometimes it’s very subtle. But I never want to go too far with the visual implications, because I want the viewer to have their own thoughts and ideas of what it is about -triggering others’ imagination is my main interest and excitement.

Q: I’m always wondered why there’re less women involved with electro-underground music and especially when it comes to the composition process! Do you’ve an explanation and does it mean this scene is just a man- or macho thing?

Kadri: I don’t know. I mean it’s quite hard to do everything yourself, it takes time and work, especially when your previous knowledge and skill set has been quite limited (like it was in my case). It’s much easier to join a band and be the token singer or synth player. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if there weren’t female visionaries, composers, producers & one-woman-armies before me, and they are the ones I look up to the most. I hope there are more to come.

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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Hackedepicciotto aka Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten) and Daniel de Picciotto (Space Cowboys), are releasing the download to one of their meditation tracks for free. It is on the album “Unity” and it was the first meditation composition the duo released. You can download it below.

Here’s some background on the track’s title. The diameter of the Sun is 108 times the diameter of the Earth. The distance from the Sun to the Earth is 108 times the diameter of the Sun. The track contains 108 affirmations to meditate on and give you strength as the band puts it. The duo have also uploaded a digital version of their collaboration with the Tiger Lillies in 2005, which has not been released as an album before.

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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Genre/Influences: Industrial, experimental.

Format: Digital, Vinyl.

Background/Info: Based in Bristol (UK) Harrga has been set up in 2017 by Miguel Prado (electronics) and Dali de Saint Paul (voice and effects). Their music is made ‘in honor of those who burn the borders & keep indelible marks’.  This album is their official debut work.

Content: This album reminds me of early 80s experiments from bands mixing industrial-, experimental- and ambient music. There’s a move back to the early origins of the 80s industrial movement, which you can notice in the industrial sound treatments. The atmosphere hanging over the work has something hostile, sometimes accentuated by ritual passages. And on top of it all you’ll discover the enigmatic vocals of Dali de Saint Paul who’s vocals are somewhat half spoken and often in an exclamation modus. The vocals are ‘sung’ in French and the lyrical content appears to be definitely engaged and even into some political perception of a dystopian reality.

+ + + : I like the retro-touch running through this work, which reminds me of early pioneers like Einstürzende Neubauten, The Hafler Trio and related formations. The music is pretty diversified and yet the particular production of the vocals appears to be the red line throughout this work. Vocals and music together create a disturbing atmosphere, which makes the strength of this work. The last songs from the album are worthy of examination for their explicit industrial approach.

– – – : The artwork of the album looks cool, but it’s a pity there’s no inscription at the front side while the back side is hard to read. Sound-wise the experimental approach will clearly appeal for a very restricted number of listeners… although there’s nothing wrong with that.

Conclusion: Behind the enigmatic artwork and the complex music, is hiding a real engagement and a critical perception of the society we’re living in!

Best songs: “Desert Song”, “Phone Recording”.

Rate: (7).

Artist: www.facebook.com/harrgamusic

Label: https://avonterrorcorps.bandcamp.com

About Harrga

Harrga is an industrial and experimental duo based in Bristol, formed in mid-2017 by Miguel Prado and vocalist Dali de Saint Paul. The project’s name means “a burn” in the Moroccan Darija dialect, a reference to the “harragas”, migrants who cross borders illegally and destroy their papers in the process. “Héroïques Animaux De La Misère”, reviewed here, is the duo’s debut album, released on Avon Terror Corps.

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