Genre/Influences: Cinematic, Experimental, Industrial, Tribal, Techno.

Format: Digital, Vinyl.

Background/Info: “Fire Pulsations” released by the collaborative duo Gwenn Trémorin (Flint Glass, Tzolk’in) – Anatoly ‘Tokee’ Grinberg comes as an addition to the remarkable debut album “Singularity Spectrum”. The EP features two new tracks plus three remixes.

Content: Both new cuts remain diversified but sound rather down-tempo compared to the album. Slow, broken, beats have been mixed with deep, vibrating, sound treatments. Both new songs have been remixed respectively by Zeller and Eks.Center while the song “Purple Vibrations” (originally released on the album) has been remixed by Stendeck.

+ + + : I definitely prefer the album to the EP although both new cuts are worthy of examination. It however sounds like the remixes -and especially the one by Zeller, have been more inspiring. Zeller injected an intelligent Techno touch to “Tempus Pulsations”. Another noticeable cut is the refined remix of Stendeck.

– – – : This work sounds a bit different to the album and is as mentioned above simply an addition.

Conclusion: There clearly is a sort of chemistry between both artists but I especially recommend listening to the album first.

Best songs: “Tempus Pulsations – Zeller Remix”, “Purple Vibrations – Stendeck Remix”, “Tempus Pulsations. 

Rate: 7½. 

Artists: www.facebook.com/gwenn.tremorin / www.facebook.com/TokeePaindonor

Label: www.ant-zen.com / www.facebook.com/antzen.official

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

Lith is a French solo-project set up in 1996 by David Vallée (also involved with EKS.Center). Lith this year released the new opus “Anthropocene” which next to be a great Tribal/IDM/Industrial work also is an album with a deeper significance. The title refers to ‘the geological era, succeeding the Holocene, during which the impact of human activity becomes preponderant on the evolution of the terrestrial ecosystem, ahead of all the other natural factors predominant until then.’ An interesting concept transposed into an intelligent sound format that has been released by the French label M-Tronic.   

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Lith is now active for nearly thirty years. How do you perceive the evolution of your sonic project and how much of the early recordings do you still recognize in your newest work “Anthropocene”?

David: The sound of Lith today is quite different from that of the beginning. There is no specific sound guideline for composing my albums, even if there is an Industrial music base. Lith is constantly evolving, the sound has been enriched by various musical influences over the years, sometimes quite eclectic, like Hip-Hop, Dub, Bass, IDM, Experimental music… The ideas also varied, refined, soothed though intensified. Except perhaps the use of distortions or tribal syncopated rhythms, I don’t think we can recognize the Lith from the beginning with the Lith of “Anthropocene”. We can find the firstfruits of this album in “Hiroshima”, released in 2015, from a musical point of view, but hardly earlier.

The original Lith was raw, aggressive and dirty, the “Anthropocene” Lith is deep, precise, intense and cinematic. There is also in terms of ideas and subtlety of the sound something similar to the album “Gaia”, released in 2006, “Anthropocene” is a bit of a continuation. 

Regarding the sound technique, as well as the composition, the recording has changed a lot. I learned, I trained on sound techniques, and then, for the finalization of “Anthropocene”, I asked for the help of Rémy Pelleschi (QFG Studio, Mlada Fronta) who is an outstanding sound engineer. This collaboration made “Anthropocene” the album that I think is the most complete in my career, technically speaking at least.

Q: Lith has been always an engaged project which is again reflected in “Anthropocene”. What are the deeper thoughts and concept you try to express and what’s the impact of this action?

David: You are right, LITH has always been a committed project, dealing with ecology, speciesism, the attacks carried by the human being against Nature. Usually, each track of an album could deal with a subject. “Anthropocene” is in this sense different because it deals with a general subject, that is to say a concept album. The word “Anthropocene” is a term more or less recognized in the scientific world, defining a geological era succeeding the Holocene, where the action of the human being becomes preponderant on the evolution of Nature. This term is not officially recognized, but it perfectly represents the concept I wanted to develop in this album.

Whatever the subject dealt with in the various tracks that make it up, they are all bound by the idea that the world of today is totally transformed by the hand of the Human, both biological, marine, atmospheric and geological. In addition to this major transformation, I also wanted to express the rage, despair and anxiety generated by this destructive impact of our actions. Previous albums of LITH denounced what human beings can do, with a notion of hope that it will not change, “Anthropocene” is full of defeatism, a hopeless realization that nothing will change, on the contrary that it will worsen.

I know that my action does not have any impact, it is even more hopeless. My music will be able to convince those already convinced, at best make react the time of some thrill, but most listeners of this album will not react. The video projections during the shows could have an impact, but I think it’s minimal. But I need to try.

Q: How did the preparation and finally composition and production of “Anthropocene” happened? What have been the different stages you’d to go through to achieve this album?

David: After the album “Hiroshima”, I searched for a long time for a new sound, bringing new musical influences to my work. At the same time, I did a lot of research on the themes usually covered by Lith, but I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of information I could use to create my tracks, not to say alarmed by the exponential speed of the destruction of our environment. This could be compared to what is called eco-anxiety. I made the decision in the end to express what I could feel, to say what there was to say in the form of a single idea: Anthropocene, a global vision of Humanity’s action on our planet. 

The composition of the tracks was very fast, less than two months, at the end of 2019. During this period I composed about thirty tracks, eight of them clearly stood out. In early 2020 I started working on the sound design of these tracks, I wanted to get something Cinematic, a kind of Soundtrack of the Anthropocene. That was the longer part, because I had a clear idea of what I was looking for. It took over a year and a half to achieve the desired result. The work was even longer as I voluntarily changed my method of work, everything was to be relearned. I really wanted something different, new, specific. The mixing phase ended, I made contact with Rémy Pelleschi who, as a sound engineer, understood what I was looking for, and carried out an exceptional mastering work: the precision, the atmosphere and the coloring I wanted.  

The last part was the graphic design. This is a very important phase because for me the imaging of an album completes the music. I called the French artist Sophie Vizzone who has been accompanying me for several years for the conception of my parallel project EKS.Center. Her work was prodigious, she perfectly embraced the subject and understood what I wanted to express, creating a graphic mixing organic and geometry.

Q: “Anthropocene” sounds to me as one of your most eclectic albums. How do you perceive the sound of the new Lith-album and what have been the main sources of inspiration? Do you’ve an idea how you want to evolve in sound on further works?

David: It’s funny because I find that this album is the most homogeneous of all the ones I composed, but it’s rather at the level of the sound technique used that I hear it. I concentrated more on the sound, the atmospheres, the emotions and the sensations, which is maybe why I perceive this singularity. It’s a bit of a sound piece composed of several acts.

The main sources of inspiration for this album are the ideas and emotions I wanted to express. Hence the compositions, in terms of the arrangement of sonorities capable of expressing these ideas and translating these emotions. I haven’t thought about style, I think all my musical influences are reflected in my songs, but I did it unconsciously. Ideas and emotions were the only sources of inspiration.

In terms of future work, I don’t know. The evolution of my sound comes from the aspirations of the moment, from my state of mind, instinctively. The only thing I know is that I want something more Cinematic, more transcendent, hypnotic. 

Q: How demanding and self-critical are you with your own compositions? Do you’ve specific references and criteria to say a song/album is finished?

David: I am very strict and critical about my work. Even if the composition is instinctive at first sight, the tracks are constantly reworked, altered, corrected, both in terms of sound and composition. I listen to every detail, I am very precise, almost maniac! For me, a song is finished only if it ‘slides’, if it doesn’t catch anything, if no sound is unpleasant, if the rhythms are perfectly linked, if each sound is heard and has its place. The song must constantly evolve, surprise, not be boring. Sometimes I work on two compositions in parallel so that they are linked as well as possible, because the order of the tracks is already more or less established from the beginning, in the sense of the chain of ideas within the album. 

An album is complete when I finish expressing the story I wanted to tell, and the last point is brought up: the design is finished, the graphics are ready. 

Q: “Anthropocene” is your first album released by M-Tronic. Considering the decline of physical sales today what do you expect from a label? And how do you expect things evolving?

David: “Anthropocene” is the first Lith album published by M-Tronic, but this label has already published the “Clouds” and “Murmurations” albums of my parallel project EKS.Center.

I decided to collaborate with M-Tronic for their support, their network, but also for their respect for an artist’s work. We agreed on a small edition of “Anthropocene”, few copies were pressed, and this mainly to the attention of amateurs and collectors, from where the care brought to the object itself. We know that physical diffusion is in decline and we agreed that a small series was enough. Nevertheless, M-Tronic also broadcasts this album on many streaming and downloading platforms (like Spotify or Bandcamp). 

M-Tronic’s strength in communication helped me to release this album. I could have produced it myself, but I didn’t want this album to remain confidential, not having this promotional capacity. And then, the members of the label are above all passionate friends, and I wanted “Anthropocene” to be released.

For the future, we’ll see. I would like to continue to work with M-Tronic, physically or digitally, depending on the music industry at the time and the demand from the audience. But I admit that I enjoy producing physical objects! 

Inferno Sound Diaries

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

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Electro-Ambient, Experimental.

Format: Digital.

Background/Info: Set up in 2008 by David Vallée, this French artist gained some recognition with his Lith project. EKS.Center this year unleashed its fifth full length.

Content: “Murmurations” clearly sounds like a step back to the past; the early experiments with Electronic equipment, which sound Experimental and pretty astral like. The songs are instrumental edits although you can hear some voice manipulated passages. The tracks are driven by slow rhythms while the sound treatments have this good-old analogue magic.

+ + + : “Murmurations” is influenced by 80s Electro experiments, but still has a refreshing and contemporary touch on top. The sounds are retro-like while the production sounds more contemporary. This way the album creates an imaginary sonic bridge between the past and today. It’s an easy listening piece of music revealing a few highlights like the ominous sounding “Still On The Road” and the more sophisticated last track “Event Horizon”. I like the astral dimension running through the work, which has been accentuated by dreamy string parts.

– – – : There are several cool songs featured at this album, but no total climax has been reached. It’s nothing more than an entertaining piece of music.

Conclusion: The new work by EKS.Center will appeal for old-fashioned Electronic lovers; a kind of back to the roots!

Best songs: “Still On The Road”, “Event Horizon”, “Bboys Style”.

Rate: (7).

Artist: www.ekscenter.net / www.facebook.com/ekscenter

Label: www.m-tronic.com / www.facebook.com/mtroniclabel

Inferno Sound Diaries

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

www.side-line.com

Belgian formation Pro Patria has been set up by Peter Vercauteren (PVC). The band was mainly active during the 80s and rapidly became one of the most promising EBM formations from that time. As Peter explains, ‘the name Pro Patria was simply a coincidence of things; perhaps we were unconsciously influenced by the SA42-song at the time, but personally I was also obsessed with Latin, which also showed in many of the early songs’. Unfortunately things went the other way round, Pro Patria never broke through and finally stopped all activities. More than 15 years later Pro Patria was asked to play live again and Peter Vercauteren finally decided to reactivate the project. The self-released album “Back To Basics” reveal a passionate and retro-like EBM, which brought me to get in touch with Peter.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries / pics with kind permission of Jirka Blumenthal and Uwe Rudolph)

Q: Can you first of all remind us how Pro Patria saw the daylight and how did you get ‘contaminated’ by the EBM-virus?

Peter: Pro Patria saw the daylight halfway the eighties because of a friend who wanted to create a band and needed someone who could play keys. After a bumpy start, I gradually took control of the project and steered away from the original, funky-commercial intention. I had always been attracted by synths and electronic music and had become a great fan of Front 242, Skinny Puppy and other bands that had laid the foundations of EBM. When Nitzer Ebb opened the Depeche Mode tour, back in 1988, the whole audience was speechless… it was something that I’d never witnessed before because usually the support act gets booed at or people chuck pints of beer at them. Here they were all in shock, too overwhelmed to even speak a word! It brought a smile on my face and right there and then I knew in which direction I wanted to take my band. It would still take some time to get there, though.

 Q: Pro Patria was without a shadow of a doubt one of the most promising Belgian EBM formations from the 90s. The consecration was the record deal with Celtic Circle Productions, but the label got bankrupt, the album got never released and Pro Patria finally stopped all activities. How do you look back at this period and what was the impact of it all on you as artist and on the man hiding behind the artist?

 Peter: I think that the problem with Pro Patria, and other emerging EBM bands of the period, was that they had arrived just one step too late. EBM was mighty popular in the eighties, but suddenly, in the early nineties, this all changed. One day to the next, EBM was dead and it had all become either techno/house or grunge. Therefore I look back upon it with great frustration because nobody seemed to be interested in us, or EBM as a whole. Heck, even the gods of the eighties like Front 242, Nitzer, FLA and even Depeche Mode had turned their backs on their origins and had changed into either techno or grunge. So it was extremely hard for young, motivated EBM bands to raise an interest.

When we eventually found a label that still believed in EBM and us, CCP, we were overjoyed and worked extremely hard on our first real album, “Quod Erat Demonstrandum”, for 9 months. It was all wonderful and the music went to the factory for the CDs to be printed and… right on that very moment… CCP went bankrupt. So we were back at square one, albeit we then had a completely finished product to offer. Again I went door to door to all possible record labels but in vain. Typical was the reply we got from Belgium’s biggest independent label at the time: ‘It’s great what you’re doing, but we’d prefer if you could make it sound a bit more techno, that you’d become the ‘Belgian Prodigy’.

Perhaps I was too stubborn or simply stupid, but I was never going to make any concessions as far as the music was concerned and I kindly refused. Then Bert, my companion at the time, and I split up because he did want to embrace a more techno-oriented sound whereas I wouldn’t have it. I still did a number of great gigs with David Vallée (Lith – Eks.Center) but then my personal situation suddenly changed much for the worse and Pro Patria was forced into the background, where I believed it would slowly die. So all in all, it was not a happy period, even though the gigs themselves made me exhilarate.

Q: But years later it was because of the EBM community you finally reactivated Pro Patria, right? How did it really happen and how did you finally come to compose new songs?

Peter: As I said, I was convinced that Pro Patria was long dead. Then, David Vallée, who’s still a close friend, contacted me a couple of years ago and said: ‘Peter, do you realize that Pro Patria is actually popular?’ I didn’t want to believe him at first because it seemed impossible… I hadn’t done anything with the band in 15 years, the CDs had never made it to the market and of our old cassette demos I’d maybe sold 200 or 250 copies, if it really were that many. But then David sent me a link to Discogs.com and to my astonishment I saw that our old cassettes were being auctioned there for more than €100 each! And I felt incredibly stupid because I had thrown all of my remaining tapes into the bin years earlier.

Coincidentally, around the same time, I was also contacted by the people of Electric Tremor, who asked me if I wanted to be on stage again, during the “Familientreffen”-festival near Leipzig. In the meantime my personal situation had again changed, much for the better this time. I’m again surrounded by people who believe in me and who really want me to continue with Pro Patria. In the first place, I’d like to thank my wife for that. So I said: ‘Why not? Let’s give it a try and see how it goes.’ In the end, I think that the concert was a bit of a success and so I thought that maybe I should start creating something new. I was a bit anxious about it at first, because I had been out of it for so long and the “Familientreffen” also made me realize that EBM had become so big and professional… all of these other bands sounded so great… But to my surprise, once I had again pushed that ‘compose’ button in my head, the inspiration flowed out quickly.

Q: “Back To Basics” might indicate what the music is all about, a kind of retro-EBM inspired sound, but what means this album to you and what kind of opus (sound- & lyrical wise) did you want to accomplish?

Peter: First of all, I wanted to return with a bang. “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” had received great reviews twenty years ago and I could hardly come up with something less if I was going to be serious about reviving Pro Patria. I still had two or three songs on the shelf which I had already started composing during the “Quod Erat Demonstrandum“-production, but obviously that wasn’t enough. As I said, the EBM standard had been raised considerably over the last 20 years and I wondered if I was going to be able to match up. Then again, inspiration turned out to be a tidal wave, thundering down on me from the very dark 15 years I had endured. So it had to sound harsh, raw, you had to feel the pain, much unlike “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” which sounded so clean and perhaps too ‘finished’. For me it was an important part of the healing process.

Q: “Back To Basics” sounds darker and harder than early Pro Patria stuff. What does it reveal about your sources of inspiration, your perception of contemporary electronic music and the equipment that has been used to compose this work?

Peter: With Pro Patria been and gone, all of the music that used to motivate and inspire me died inside of me as well. Surprisingly, the only music that still meant anything to me was Bach and I often hid behind my piano in an impossible attempt to forget reality. Imagine the shock when I found out how magnificent contemporary EBM had become! Yet I deliberately refused to listen to other music during production because I didn’t want to be influenced. It had to be pure Pro Patria, nothing else. The only thing I occasionally listened to was “Quod Erat Demonstrandum”. I went back to my roots (‘back to basics’) and wondered how Pro Patria would have evolved if it had continued to exist all of this time. Hence darker and harder. “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” was also a useful guide in order to help me with production, which was by far the greatest obstacle.

I’m not a techie who’s picky about the instruments one has to use. It’s not which equipment you use but how you use it. On “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” for example, we mainly used Roland D20 and D70 keyboards. Rather the sort of instruments one associates with commercial happy-flappy music. On “Back to Basics” I drove the D20 through an old guitar rack to get some amazing sounds. Unfortunately this procedure took away some of the depth in the music. It’s always a compromise and you have to find that perfect balance between what you want to convey and still keep the music pleasurable to listen to, especially in this particular case with music filled with rage.

Q: This album clearly belongs to the so-called ‘DIY’ (do it yourself) culture so how did you manage all different aspects of the job (recording, mixing, production, promotion, distribution, social media…) and what do you think about the evolution compared to the 90s?

Peter: Eh… I don’t know whether I managed well altogether. “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” was mixed and produced by Marc Schellekens, a highly skilled studio engineer. I, on the other hand, consider myself to be a musician, certainly not a producer. Therefore the hardest aspect was not composing (all 8 new songs on “Back To Basics” were composed and worked out in six weeks’ time), but trying to make it sound decent enough. I’m still not very happy about the result, but it’s a steep learning curve and I’m sure that I’ll do better next time.

Another aspect of not being 20 anymore, is that you have more responsibilities in life. As a youngster, you can easily spend all of your savings on equipment and studio and you can’t care less about the cost. When you’re approaching 50, you tend to get a bit more careful and you also wonder if a certain investment is going to be worthwhile. I could have spent a thousand Euros to have the CD mastered by a professional, but if you’re hoping to sell only 200 to 300 CDs, it’s going to be difficult to get some return on investment.

Moreover, I have moved to Italy 8 years ago, a country where EBM simply doesn’t exist, so it was impossible to find help nearby. As regards to promotion etcetera… I may be a beginner as far as mixing and mastering is concerned, but I’m an absolute zero with promotion and social media. It’s part of an unpleasant discovery I made about myself i.e. that I’m seriously autistic (“Living In A Cage”). A positive thing for me about the music world now, compared to 20 years ago, is that it has become much more on-line and far less personal. It allows me to hide behind my computer screen and it has also become a lot easier to spread your music all across the globe. Fortunately there are a number of people out there who haven’t hesitated to lend me a hand, and in the first place I’d like to thank Sébastien Bourlier (Blondwülf) for everything he’s done to bring Pro Patria back into the spotlights.

Most of all, I’m overjoyed that EBM’s back, stronger and more alive than ever and I feel extremely honored that Pro Patria received a warm welcome back from the EBM community.

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