In this interview, we sit down with David Thrussell, the Australian electronic music legend known as Black Lung, to discuss his provocative new album, “The Brutal Gardener”. Known for his unique blend of technology, art, and culture, Thrussell delves into themes of global governance, cultural leadership, and the intersection of technology with human life. As he explores the darker sides of our modern world, he offers a stark vision of the future shaped by powerful, unseen forces. Through his lens, we see a world where technology can be both a tool of control and a beacon of possibility. Join us as Thrussell unpacks his latest work and shares his thoughts on the current state of global affairs.

SL: You link technology, art, and culture with population control. How do you exactly see these elements interacting to shape the future?

DT: In the swirling crucible we call ‘life’, many currents and forces compete for ascendancy (or even just survival). Indeed, the occult maelstrom manifests in our realm through mass media (hypnosis), technology (magic), twilight language (word spells), and public ritual (invocation). The neon wasteland of materialism renders all the forces of sorcery as mundane to the unseeing, unquestioning eye, but just behind the veil, the alchemists are busy weaving dark, ancient incantations. For what is magic truly, except the exertion of will (power) over base metal (sleeping souls)? The cosmic clock has struck midnight, and the warlock shepherd has grown weary of herding his flock hither and yon, frightening the cattle from one pasture to the next with dramatic gestures, faux lightning bolts, and shadow plays. The vengeful rancher now yearns to manage, cull, and dwindle the herd.

SL: Your new album explores twelve scenarios for the future of global governance and cultural leadership. Is there any governance existing right now in the world that is the closest to what you’d call global cooperation and technological harmony? Which one is heading in the worst direction?

DT: Nations are a fiction whispered to cowering children in the dark of the night. A lilting lullaby sung softly to a lost man forever dying of thirst in a forgotten, windswept desert. Democracy is the last, hurried dance on the petrified deck of a glacial Titanic, as it ever so slowly sinks beneath the cold waves. In the ancient world, the Colosseum served as the site of mass blood sacrifice to appease the elder gods and keep them at bay. Today, wars, prescribed poisons, infanticide, and other media bloodsports fill the cauldron as the eldritch ones await. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and the dark sages use their conjuring to distract, divide, disempower, and disable the innocent Eloi majority, harvesting their passions and energy to build the very cages they languish in.

SL: Being often described as a conspiracy thinker, I find it kinda odd that trust is a recurring theme in your work.

DT: Free will, trust, and faith are the greatest powers we possess. But they can be used against us. As Doctor Faustus chose to sign away his immortal soul to Satan’s agent Mephistopheles, so too we unconsciously contract with Beelzebub at the ballot box, the motor registry, the mortgage office, and the medical abattoirs. While the eternal heavens deserve our trust and faith, here on Earth we wrestle ‘not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’

SL: You envision the role of culture in achieving a better world. But since humans walk around here, we haven’t really seen culture change anything. It didn’t prevent wars, sure as hell didn’t prevent genocides.

DT: The oldest struggle is good against evil, life against death, the light against the void. Man has always saved his best seeds in ideas, songs, stories, and culture. As the flood wipes away everything before it, a handful of seeds—brilliant seeds—are swept deep under the waves only to sprout long into the future on that dry, final shore.

SL: How do you see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fitting into your vision of technology transforming lives? I see they have entered the presidential race in the USA already. I personally invested in uranium, gold, and silver mines since I don’t trust fiat money.

DT: I see technology as a lifeform. Humans, the animal kingdom, and the green kingdom are carbon-based lifeforms. Today, technology is largely a silicon-based lifeform. Currently, silicon lifeforms engage in a uniquely parasitic relationship with humankind. Perhaps, in the future, carbon-based lifeforms will be able to form a synergetic alliance with technology. Like the human gut aligns with microbes and bacteria to digest human food, we might form a potential symbiotic relationship with the grey (technological) kingdom.

While it is true that fiat currencies are a complete scam (as is the entire banking system), it is possible, in my view, that what we may be witnessing here with cryptocurrencies is an example of what has been described as a ‘false binary.’ A ‘false binary’ is a situation when both (or all) options that are presented are all essentially a trap. Whereas fiat currencies are a relatively obvious fraud, cryptocurrencies are marketed as the ‘edgy’ alternative to fiat bondage, supposedly offering ‘liberty’ and financial ‘independence’ while possibly delivering (in actuality) omniscient financial control, limitless surveillance, and dubious programmability.

SL: If you look closely at the economy worldwide, there are clear signs there is a huge crisis coming up in 2025. That’s not all; there are geopolitical tensions, environmental degradation, social unrest, health emergencies, cyber threats, resource scarcity, misinformation, and fake news. The 10 ingredients that make up a global crisis.

DT: World War III has already started. The greater mass of the population are still fighting the last war—the noble myths of foreign enemies and Marvel movie villains. But a new war now rages, undeclared by the cable news carnival barkers and empty social media influencers: leviathan forces don the mask of domestic governments and wage a silent war against bewildered citizens who bicker amongst themselves over hot-button issues and occult theatre phantoms. The occult spell of financialization and the black magic of the market will be weaponized.

SL: Can you elaborate on why you believe this moment of time is full of opportunities? We have various totalitarian countries on the outlook to what is possible with the USA and its allies acting like sheep towards Russia, China, and co. I miss the real hawks, to be honest.

DT: Though we are spiritually enslaved, shackled in a materialist nightmare, and chained to ritual subjugation and mass humiliation, we do, theoretically, still possess free will, the ability to reject our overlords or at least question the unquestionable and speak the unspeakable. Though the hour is late, not all is lost. The distant candle of knowledge and light is still flickering… just. We can choose…

SL: Let’s play the advocate of the devil. If you look at the low quality of the political class nowadays, is a (totalitarian?) technocratically run state by definition bad?

DT: That has always been the totalitarian’s (and the colonist’s) best argument, and there may be dark, private moments when it could be tempting to agree, for indeed the people are at best hopelessly innocent or perhaps even haplessly stupid. But, do remember that we are witnesses to incredible systems of control, distraction, and indoctrination. Literally trillions of dollars are spent every year on education, mass media, political and social systems whose primary purpose, I would argue, is to infantilize, divide, distract, and dumb down the population. Incredible resources and energy are marshaled to demoralize and disable people: to separate them from source, spirit, and truth. If we could destroy, neutralize, or deflect those systems…

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 Dutch electro rock act Darker is set to release their debut album “Memento” on March 1, 2024. The album marks the band’s transition from releasing singles and EPs to their first full-length project. Formed during the 2020 pandemic, the band consists of Jeps Salfischberger, Evil-ien Rombouts, and was later joined by Valerio Recenti.

The creation process took place in their Tilburg home studio, with Recenti contributing from his studio in The Hague. The collaboration has produced 87 songs, leading to the release of the singles “Love is Gonna Save Us” and “Hope” in 2021, followed by the EPs “Rainy Days” and “Wild Rose” in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Note that their song “Enough” received a Song Of The Year nomination by 3voor12 Tilburg, ranking 13th.

In 2023, Darker released more tracks including “Radio Panic”, “Fake News”, “All I Gave”, “Plastic Dreams” and “You Started It All“. Their music draws from 80’s synthpop, darkwave, postpunk, influenced by acts such as Depeche Mode, Editors, White Lies, Röyksopp, Nine Inch Nails, and How To Destroy Angels.

During live performances the band is accompanied by a live drummer and visuals on four LED screens to provide an immersive audio-visual experience.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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

side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Minimal-Electro, Experimental, EBM, Industrial-Techno.

Format: Digital.

Background/Info: This album is the third production resulting from the common efforts between the duo  Brien Hindman – Philipp Münch. This new work is their first album released on Ant-Zen which is a familiar label for the different projects of Philipp Münch. It’s a conceptual work dealing with ‘the more fake news and misinformation is on the rise, the more there is the need to re-establish humanity’s faith in science.’

Content: Behind the concept hides a diversified Electronic composition which is clearly getting us back to the 80s for the irresistible vintage sound treatments and global minimalistic approach. But the work also deals with other influences like EBM and Industrial but also Techno-Trance driven passages. The tracklist is a mix of instrumental- and sung songs.

+ + + : What I mainly like in this work is the creative approach of the composition. It has an explicit vintage approach with a very own and contemporary touch on top. The songs are also varied but creating a coherent entity. I recommend listening to “Future Wasteland” for the intelligent fusion between EBM and Industrial minimalism. This song perfectly illustrates why this album is ‘creative’. I also have to mention the powerful and definitely 80s connected “Watson And Crick”. And in a different genre you’ll notice the more Techno oriented “Nils Bohr”.

– – – : The work sounds maybe a bit versatile but I don’t have any problem with that.

Conclusion: Colony Collapse Disorder strikes back with fully accomplished retro-driven production which sounds however refreshing.

Best songs: “Future Wasteland”, “Watson And Crick”, “Nils Bohr”, “Heat”, “Recombined DNA”.

Rate: 8.

Artist: www.facebook.com/Colony-Collapse-Disorder-175726989143001

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.

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In an open letter addressed to his former The Smiths’ colleague Johnny Marr, Morrissey has made a call for his former bandmate Johnny Marr to “stop using my name as clickbait”.

Morrissey: “Would you please stop mentioning my name in your interviews? Would you please, instead, discuss your own career, your own unstoppable solo achievements and your own music? If you can, would you please just leave me out of it?”

And he adds: “You know nothing of my life, my intentions, my thoughts, my feelings. Yet you talk as if you were my personal psychiatrist with consistent and uninterrupted access to my instincts. We haven’t known each other for 35 years – which is many lifetimes ago. (…) When we met you and I were not successful. We both helped each other become whatever it is we are today. Can you not just leave it at that? Must you persistently, year after year, decade after decade, blame me for everything … from the 2007 Solomon Islands tsunami to the dribble on your grandma’s chin?”

Morrissey then ends the open letter by writing: “There comes a time when you must take responsibility for your own actions and your own career, with which I wish you good health to enjoy. Just stop using my name as click-bait. I have not ever attacked your solo work or your solo life, and I have openly applauded your genius during the days of ‘Louder than bombs’ and ‘Strangeways, here we come’, yet you have positioned yourself ever-ready as rent-a-quote whenever the press require an ugly slant on something I half-said during the last glacial period as the Colorado River began to carve out the Grand Canyon. Please stop. It is 2022, not 1982.”

In a response on Twitter Johnny Marr simply says: “An ‘open letter’ hasn’t really been a thing since 1953, It’s all ‘social media’ now. Even Donald J Trump had that one down. Also, this fake news business… a bit 2021 yeah? #makingindiegreatagain”

The source of all the commotion…

By the time “Strangeways, Here We Come” was released in September 1987, The Smiths had split. The breakdown has been primarily attributed to Morrissey’s irritation with Marr’s work with other artists and Marr’s frustration with Morrissey’s musical inflexibility. Marr particularly hated Morrissey’s obsession with covering 1960s pop artists such as Twinkle and Cilla Black, saying in 1992: “That was the last straw, really. I didn’t form a group to perform Cilla Black songs.” In a 1989 interview, Morrissey cited the lack of a managerial figure and business problems as reasons for the split.

In 2008, Marr resumed contact with Morrissey and Rourke while remastering the band’s catalogue and in September of the same year, Morrissey and Marr met in Manchester and discussed the possibility of reforming the band. The two kept in contact over the next four days and decided to exclude Joyce from any prospective reunion and to wait until after Marr completed his commitments to the Cribs. Communication between the two abruptly ended while Marr was touring in Mexico with the Cribs and the topic of a reunion was never brought up again.

In June 2009, Marr told an interviewer on London’s XFM, “I think we were offered 50 million dollars for three … possibly five shows.” He said that the chances of a reunion were “nothing to do with money” and that the reasons were “really abstract”.

Marr said that he did not hear from Morrissey again until a brief email correspondence in December 2010.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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

side-line.com

Genre/Influences: IDM, Cinematographic, Electro-Ambient.

Format: Digital, CD, Double 12” Vinyl.

Background/Info: After a hiatus of six years,
Alessandro Zampieri aka Stendeck strikes back with the sixth official album of his music project. After having released albums on Geska Records and Tympanik Audio, “Carnage” is the first work released by Hymen Records. The album features vocals by Kristi Lyn Scaccia and the voices of Les Voix Obscures Choir. The album seems to be inspired by fake news. 

Content: Stendeck remains mainly driven by the sound of IDM; an intelligent Electronic creation driven by broken rhythms, evasive atmospheres and sensual female vocals. Some passages are more into mystic moods while other cuts are pure cinematographic music. This album is without a shadow of a doubt the most versatile work of the artist.

+ + + : Stendeck holds on to its good-old influences, remaining impacted by IDM, but this work is also much more cinematographic than ever before. I however prefer the IDM cuts, which also have something pretty sensual –especially when driven by a slow tempo and the sexy timbre of the voice of Kristi Lyn Scaccia. There are numerous great songs featured on this album, but “New Dark Age” and “Eyeless Creatures Gently Stifle The Ivy Lady” both definitely are outstanding (quite curiously these tracks are instrumental edits).

– – – : I expected a bit more out of the song featuring Les Voix Obscures Choir.

Conclusion: It’s good to see Stendeck releasing a new, visionary album, which clearly stands for the most creative and intelligent side of Electro-Underground music.

Best songs: “New Dark Age”, “Eyeless Creatures Gently Stifle The Ivy Lady”, “Red Neon”, “Queen Of Beauty Tragic Obsession”, “Thirteen Wolves Mass Conspiracy”.

Rate: 8½.

Artist: www.stendeck.com / www.facebook.com/stendeckmusic

Label: www.hymen-records.com / www.facebook.com/hymenrecords Read the news on ‘Carnage’.

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

Does the name Mark Burghraeve make ring a bell? No doubt about it, ‘older’ electro heads know this Belgian artist born in 1961! Together with Marc Verhaeghen he set up The Klinik and created the band’s original look. Both ‘old’ mates are now back again working on new Klinik-stuff. You might also know him from his work under the Somnambulist moniker and M.Bryo & D.M.T. He also worked with artists and bands such as Niki Mono, Bill Leeb, Insekt, Vomito Negro, For Greater Good, Mike Shelter, Brain Pilot, Dark Poem, Hybryds, Les Boufons Tristes ao. Mark Burghraeve is a man of many talents and next to his music activities he’s also active as a multimedia artist and graphic-, video- & sound-designer and sound & light engineering. But back to music! The French label Nuit Et Brouillard recently released the album “Things I Was Due To Forget 1979 – 2005”. The work has been released on different vinyl formats and is now planned to be released on CD format as well. The music brings us back to the early and original sound of electronic music… to the roots. This interview will give you more background information about this passionate, fascinating and visionary artist.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: The least I can say is that you’re involved with an impressive number of very different artistic projects. Do you’ve some preferences in your artistic creation, what’s the importance of music and do you still have secret dreams in mind?

Mark: My preferred creations are the ones where I could sit at home and work on them in my own tempo and atmosphere, without any unwanted interference from the outside world. The ones where I could set my own deadlines and delegate some of the time consuming work. I like to see myself as a multi-media artist in the broad sense of the word. Music is one of the media I use to evoke or reproduce feelings, visions and dreams, based on my experiences and observations. I jump from one medium to another, sometimes mixing them. And the more I can use in one project, the more satisfying it becomes. The final result grows into a part of a viewer’s or a listener’s precious time. The artist has only this short period to take them on a small journey by exposing himself.

I try to keep my mind and taste open. My dreams are no secret. It would be nice to have my work survive the times, interpreted by others as it has already happened. The best feeling one can have is that his work is appreciated by as many people as possible, I guess. Making an immersive VR experience is on the want-list. Another film score would be nice too. A book maybe? A golden tie?

Q: You’ve been inspired by early electronic pioneers, but you in a way became a pioneer yourself. How do you look back at the early years of electronic music? Was there a kind of particular ‘spirit’, ‘philosophy’, ‘goal’… and do you see common elements with what’s happening today?

Mark: I always felt as a pioneer, out to get a taste of the future. Electronic music was the most futuristic music then. That time,  synthesizers were expensive and not seen as a full instrument yet. They were more like an effect in a classic rock setting, an extra weird toy for the keyboard player, like Pierre Henry did in the sixties with “Psycho-Rock”. Or they were used as sound effect machines for cinema as Bebe and Louis Barron already did in the fifties for the movie “Forbidden Planet”. Apart from “Popcorn” by Anarchic System, full electronic music was not yet popular. There weren’t that many people in Belgium who had a synth and tried to make music that fitted the expectations of a new sci-fi future vision.

After the ‘No Future’-era, we were looking for one. Most of the guys who had synths made ‘cosmic’ music or just collected buttons. Pure electronic music was not regarded as ‘real’ music yet. But there was a kind of spirit of togetherness between the artists of that time in Antwerp, a lot of independent projects and disciplines crossed each other: theater, music, fine arts, fashion, performance. It was a period in time when we revolted more, as a group or as individuals, against anything we were opposed to. We used the new technologies. We walked away from tradition and uniformity. Sometimes we even had ‘goals’. From political- and ecological awareness to shared ethics and aesthetics. We were multicultural anarchists with a rainbow of tastes and opinions. We were the avant-garde. We were the underground.

I don’t see this anymore, it seems culture has been institutionalized, nationalized, censored and belonging to the happy few who get financial support from the government. I see increasing xenophobia and homophobia. I see aggression, racism, poverty and despair in this modern day dystopia. And cell-phones, lots of cell-phones. But then again, I don’t go out that much anymore, so I might miss out on a lot of what is happening today.

Q: One thing is for sure, the late 70s and early 80s were pure ‘underground’-like! I think it had something magic, connecting people a different way than today. Today we’ve the internet, electronic music became much more accessible… everything became that different. What’s your perception about this evolution? The pros and cons?

Mark: The pros are that it all became much more accessible and now more people can create, produce and put their stuff on the internet. One can reach a global audience immediately. A computer is now a household thing and most people have cell-phones. We are all connected by wire or by Wifi and have libraries of virtual synths and plug-ins at the touch of a button or screen, complete with professional production tools and low distribution costs, if any.  Also you can get direct feedback from people all over the world who value your stuff. One can communicate faster. Co-operations over great distances get easier. Tools are easier to find.

The contras are that anybody can make music and put videos on YouTube. But without talent, proper promotion or attention of the media one can get lost in the flood of banal information. Today’s internet has become a marketplace, a big and busy one. You need extra skills if you want to get noticed as an artist. Like for instance opening an e-mail account to get PayPal. It also still leaves a very big and bad ecological footprint. Think of the control knob you ordered on e-bay, transported by trains, planes and diesel trucks.

The search for new music has also dramatically changed, we have robot programs that search for everything we want, telling us what we are supposed to like, based on databases and tags. Before all this, we physically went to the record shop to buy what they were offering. We had magazines with no commercials. No cell-phones, no social media sites, no e-mail, no internet. Just telephone, fax, modems and walkmans. Cassettes were the independent medium of that time. The home-studio was born. Affordable, but still expensive. I was lucky to have Stefan Van Elsen (Trans-4M,  Brain Pilot, …) of Central Tapes who distributed my work. Teac, Tascam & Fostex competed with Revox. There were still U-matic, 12-bit Digital Recording, Commodore & Spectrum, Memorex. All these factories sold physical equipment. Nowadays, big companies sell or even just rent data for the same use.

It has it’s pros and cons. The thing is, it’s here. One has to use it as a tool and avoid distractions. It’s still very new and it already had a very radical impact on all our lives. Writers like Kafka, Orwell or Huxley couldn’t even have dreamt this up. It’s like their warnings became handbooks for the rulers. Are we in the hands of a system we don’t understand, own or even know anymore? Who collects and controls the data? Does all this ‘security’ make us feel safe or does it make us more scared or paranoid? Since the expression ‘Fake News’ has been introduced, nobody trusts the media anymore, from both sides. We have political propaganda and commercials in between the services we paid for. We’ve all seen how YouTube and Google have evolved from data providers to data collectors. Do we lose freedom and privacy and should we protect these values? What’s this thing with wars, money, power and persistent ecological & political unawareness?

We live in glass houses. Too many rats in a cage with an overload of information. Sorry, what was the question again?

Q: Nuit Et Brouillard recently released the double album “Things I Was Due To Forget”; I should say an appropriated title for songs taking us back to your first sonic compositions. How did this release come through and can you tell us something about the origin of the songs?

Mark: Sylvie, co-founder of the French Nuit Et Brouillard-label, once made a compilation tape from records she had borrowed from a friend to play in her car. One of the songs was “The Empty Street” by M.Bryo & D.M.T. from the “No Big Business” compilation. Years later she found me on Facebook on a picture with Marc Verhaeghen (the Klinik) and Bill Leeb (Frontline Assembly), from the time we worked together on Noise Unit. She knew both Marc and Bill, but had never heard of me until she did some investigations. Nuit Et Brouillard invited me to Lille to meet them in person, so I took all my courage, some luggage and a train to France. There I met Stéphane as well. We talked about music and politics and played with the idea of making a release. It was a bit like checking each other out, before we made this idea concrete.

For Nuit Et Brouillard it would certainly have been the most ‘commercial’ record they would have ever made, since they were mainly releasing more experimental and ‘obscure’ music. A bold step. They showed me their beautifully made releases. Some of them had handmade art covers. All their releases were treated as gems, showing a deep involvement and respect for the artist. They were not driven by money, but by passion. Of course I felt very flattered by the offer and I loved the people there in Lille who supported me. I had the chance to do everything from A to Z; music, lyrics, recordings, mastering and artwork. I am very lucky to have had this opportunity and I am proud with the result.

The songs had their origin in the late seventies, the start of punk, affordable synths, drum machines & multi track recorders. Bands like Kraftwerk, Tubeway Army, Ultravox and The Human League had just started and people like Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, Tomita and Walter Carlos had already opened the door to popular electronic music.

I lived in industrial Hoboken and was a DJ for some time, pretty up to date. By buying the ‘trash’ the record shop couldn’t sell on a Friday, I got a lot of weird unknown stuff. The weirder it was, the more I liked it. Anyway, I had fun in my room with my machines, later got into computers and now I’m still trying to use technology as a medium, not only for making sound.

Q: When it comes to music, I think there’re very different types of artists; classical schooled musicians, composers, producers, self taught artists and experimentalists who clearly break the codes. Where do you place yourself and tell us a bit more about the different aspects of being the musician/artist you are?

Mark: I’m a self-taught mad experimentalist, composer, bad musician, an OK writer and from time to time, if I may say so, a very able producer with neo-classical ambitions, and some more… I cherish my work as a musician as much as I like using other media. If I get bored or stuck with one medium, I jump onto another one. It keeps the creative ball rolling. Sometimes one inspires the other. Bringing as much art forms as possible into one project is the most satisfying, I think. To me, programming is an art form as well. Sometimes a program can be written as elegantly as a poem.

Q: You’ve been involved with different music projects; M.Bryo & DMT, The Somnambulist, The Klinik… and you’ve worked with an impressive list of artists. What did you keep in mind from all these projects and experiences and tell us something more about The House of the Thepaphone?

Mark: So many stories to tell. So many experiences. Every contact has its anecdotes. Sometimes, it seemed as if I lived in a soap opera, complete with the melodrama and the intrigues. But the fun part was the work itself, trying to get the best results with the tools I had. Having my own rock-band KOYT! was great, but what I liked especially were the one-on-ones, like Les Bouffons Tristes with Peter Geysels, whom I knew from For Greater Good or the ones with Sophie from Dark Poem.

With The House of the Thepaphone, I try to create a cosy place for my friends and I on Bandcamp, a popular music site for independent use, with a possibility to get some money for the music. Not big amounts, but since money seems to be a handy thing to have on this planet, any return is always welcome. It’s where I put some of the collaborations with other artists and completed works from my archive. On SoundCloud I put my most recent sketches and portfolios. ReverbNation was one of the first music libraries I used on the web. I forgot MySpace, but who didn’t? I think of building some more websites. They open possibilities for experiment and promotion. Recently, I got on Spotify and iTunes, to keep up with the new tools and platforms. I’m still learning.

The House of the Thepaphone :

Nuit Et Brouillard:

Other Links:

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

Back in the early 80s I’d the opportunity to see ‘new’ musical styles and bands emerging at the surface. One of the bands I’ll never forget is Test Department. Their live shows were something unique and still incomparable. They were pioneers of industrial music, but also a reaction against the materialistic-, conservative society. The album “Shoulder To Shoulder” released in 1985 together with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir remains one of the ultimate productions featuring the ‘political and social’ engagement of the band. To fully understand the early years of Test Dept. I recommend the DVD released in 2016 by Cold Spring Records “From The Vaults: The Sound Of Progress”. Test Dept. released several productions, which entered into history. After their 80s industrial experiments and major releases such as “Beating The Retreat” (1984), the legendary “The Unacceptable Face Of Freedom” (1986) they progressively moved towards techno-driven experiments. Their last studio album “Tactics For Evolution” was released in 1998. Twenty one years later core members Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy joined hands again to release a new masterpiece entitled “Disturbance” –released by One Little Indian Records. The songs clearly sound as an offspring between their early industrial work and later techno experiments. Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy kindly accepted to answer a few questions about the past, the present while giving us a little view about their future.

For this interview I would like to thank Side-Line and Peek-A-Boo for their interest to each publish this interview as a kind of ‘collaboration’ between both Belgian online platforms.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Test Dept. has released an impressive number of productions in between 1981 and 1998. The early material remains a real reference in the history of industrial music while the 90s material was more techno-orientated. What did you keep in mind from both amazing periods and what does this new album “Disturbance” mean to you?

TD: Sonically, the new album is at once reaching back into the early 80s work of Test Dept., using the 90s work as a stepping stone, and coming to today with a new and dynamic sound which references and reflects on the past while forging a new path to the future.

Q: I always have experienced Test Dept. as ‘total art’, but also as a collective with a strong and clear humanistic involvement; a reflection about society and the world we’re living in! The global approach of the new work hasn’t really changed and you mentioned a quote of Bertolt Brecht ‘Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer to shape it’! Back in the 80s you’ve been unto surveillance of the British government, which clearly didn’t share a similar meaning of ‘artistic freedom’. What has been the impact of this all on your personal lives and how do you see the situation evolving today?

TD: We do indeed try to reflect and comment on the world around us, as it evolves and changes; but we do not seek to be didactic, in the sense of trying to preach or teach specifically, rather we seek to inform and open up strands of ideas to research and question. It is always most important to question what you see and read and hear, from all sides of the debate. To not do so is to remain ignorant and open to the influence and control of darker forces, to be gullible to fake news and outlandish conspiracy theories, as well as the manipulation of our lives in the global market place. Today the surveillance is done by each and every one of us on ourselves. ‘Surveillance Capitalism’ is the new techno church. Keep your mind open and clear and reserve the right, and ability, to question, learn and adapt to what is happening in the world around you.

Q: The 80s had something fascinating; at one side it was an amazing decade revealing new and creative music styles and artistic formats; underground music really exploded! But at the other side it also was a decade characterized by a kind of decline, political crisis, wars, fanatic regimes, unemployment… but it seems even worst today! What’s your perception about this evolution, the current situation in the UK and do you also see positive trends?

TD: The 80s were an amazing time for musical development. So many different strands of music were born or expanded upon then, and experimentation was much more readily accepted within the mainstream. That seems difficult in today’s market-led environment, although on the fringes there is still a great deal of sonic exploration. The disparate strands, and tribes, in music seemed to come together over the late 80s/early 90s acid house time (in Britain at least) and the techno revolution was born. But then the mid 90s saw a kind of revisionist movement, led by the anti-punk rock of Oasis and others which seemed to reflect the homogenisation of culture and politics under Tony Blair’s New Labour ‘Red Tories’.

The times now seem so crazy and disconcerting, with illegal foreign wars, terrorism at home, racism, the rise of the far-right, Brexit and Trump making previous times seem stable and secure, but all these are actually deeply rooted in the political and social doctrine started in the 80s by the Thatcher-Reagan axis –the laissez-faire neo-liberal free-market global economy. We are currently living through its end-game today, but as the wind of change picks up, and the Establishment begins to feel threatened by the collapse of the system that it has profited from so richly, its grip will continue to tighten for a while to come in order to hold on to power for as long as it can.

It is maybe hard to see positive trends amidst this collapse, but there are many grass-roots movements happening across the globe, albeit swamped in the news stakes by the sensational-seeking private press and the vested interests of the corporate state. But in the end, Climate Change will be the great leveler. All will become meaningless by the need to tackle this existential threat to our world –although all these problems will also be greatly exacerbated by it initially. We have to hope that very, very soon, when reality hits home and the threat is fully understood, the divisions between us start to disappear and we come together to find a solution. We don’t have much time left.

Q: I’ve been always fascinated how artists are transposing themes/messages/concepts into music, the real meaning of it all and the impact on the audience. It’s interesting to see people dancing on a song while the lyrical content of that song deals with a serious subject. I would like to get your opinion?

TD: From the beginning of time, music across the globe has reflected and commented on the social, political and the personal experiences and ideas of the societies that have spawned it. Most, but not all, music has rhythm at its heart, which therefore inevitably leads to dancing. You can dance out demons just as much as welcome in gods or seasons in delirious celebration and bodily movement. In the West, folk music has always commented on outrage and oppression while people turned a mighty jig, Punk opened a generation’s eyes to the injustices of the system while they pogoed the night away, and Blues, Jazz, Soul and Hip Hop have been the call against discrimination and persecution of the black diaspora for successive generations. Music and rhythm are simply the most direct way to express feelings and the easiest way for people to connect and empathise with those feelings, be they beauty, love, sadness or anger.

Q: The basis of the new album “Disturbance” comes from the band’s archives. You next reworked these songs, but can you tell us something more about the original versions (demos). When were these songs originally composed and by whom plus what did you finally added, changed reworked?

TD: We started to remix the older tunes from “Beating the Retreat” and “The Unacceptable Face of Freedom” albums as an experiment some years ago. Those two albums –our first two official studio albums, were quite ground-breaking, in terms of ideas and sound. When developing the new album we decided to just take germs of ideas from those albums, from the tracks we felt still had a resonance with today, mainly in the political/social themes, but also sonically. They are a re-working, a re-imagining, in a broad way, but really they are new pieces, crafted from new raw-materials with a sprinkle of spice from earlier. This gives it the feel of something intrinsically linked to our past, but new in its feel and of this time and place.

Q: Sound-wise “Disturbance” is the perfect fusion between your 80s industrial sound and the more danceable/technoid approach from the 90s. This album could be a kind of sonic epitaph to make people clear what Test Dept. has been all about! What means this work in the band’s discography and might we expect more new work?

TD: Yes, it is an important milestone, for sure. It joins other key works which marked vital moments and transitions in our story, in particular: “Beating The Retreat”; “The Unacceptable Face of Freedom”; “Gododdin”; “Pax Britannica” and “Totality”. We will continue to develop new work and we have a few different project ideas in development, including the continuation of the Prolekult project, a collaborative venture with the kinetic sculpture artist autoPneumatiX from Manchester, which we initially performed at our “Assembly of Disturbance”-festival in London 2017. We are also continuing to develop our hybrid electronic performance/DJ set “Kontinuum” for different environments.

Q: You’re actually playing live again. I’ve read you don’t want to bring a ‘best of’ performance so what might the audience expect and how does the act look-like?

TD: We are currently performing a live version of “Disturbance”. We have built new percussion and trigger equipment, thanks to our brilliant live sound person and producer Lottie Lou Poulet, alongside the electronics. We have the amazing Zel Kaute providing a solid and powerful rhythmic base on drums. We also have a dynamic new visual backdrop created by our visual director David Altweger. An intense all-encompassing live experience.

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

Set up in 1982 in Ljubljana (Slovenia) Borghesia became a so-called pioneer in the electronic-underground scene. Early albums such as “No Hope No Fear” and “Escorts” both released on Play It Again Sam became EBM-icons. They next went on releasing noticeable productions such as “Resistance”, “Dreamers In Colours” ao, but the influences progressively evolved. The band finally stopped their activities in 1995, but came back alive in 2009. Core members Dario Seraval and Aldo Ivančić got joined by new members. The band released a new album entitled “And Man Created God” (2014) on Metropolis Records. And now they’re back again with the opus “Proti Kapitulaciji” released in their homeland on the independent label Moonlee Records. The work reveals a very own approach mixing elements of industrial- and rock music. I’d a chat with Aldo Ivančić. For this interview I would like to thank Side-Line and Peek-A-Boo for their interest to each publish this interview as a kind of ‘collaboration’ between both Belgian online platforms.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: How would you introduce Borghesia ano 2019 while reflecting items such as line-up, sound & influences, production and live performances?  

Aldo: The line-up is: Dario Seraval (vocals), Irena Tomažin (vocals), Jelena Rusjan (bass guitar and vocals), Ivo Poderžaj (vocals, bass guitar and guitar), Sašo Benko (guitar), Aldo Ivančić (drums), Lina Rica and Boštjan Čadež (video), Primož Vozelj (sound engineer) and Igor Remeta (lights). So, quite a big project with a lot of people. We like every kind of music and for this project we explored music from the beginning of 20^th century, artists like Luiggi Rusollo, Marinetti, Kurt Weill, Russian constructivists… very interesting stuff 😉 Our new performance is kind of multimedia with prepared computer graphics with live processing and live performance combined with back tapes from computer.

Q: “Proti Kapitulaciji” is your newest full length album. What kind of work did you want to accomplish and how do you look back at the writing and recording plus the multiple contributors (mainly singers) of the work?

Aldo: We worked for 3 years on this project. First we selected 12 poems by Srečko Kosovel and it was very hard to make a decision, because he has a lot of good poems. His poetry is timeless and a lot of people were surprised when they discovered that these lyrics where written 100 year ago. Can you imagine that he wrote 100 years ago: ‘The phone lines are all dead, Oh, but this one is cordless’.

Very visionary. So, the central point of the record are definitely the lyrics and we built the music around them. Most of the people think that W. Burroughs is inventor of cut – up technique, but we think, that Srečko Kosovel had invented it 50 years earlier. He called them ‘Kons’ (Constructions). Our approach was in a way cinematic in editing the lyrics like the film is made of different scenes. That is the reason why we used a lot of different vocals in one song. It is not very often that you can hear it in ‘pop’ songs. Maybe Frank Zappa, but this is another story;)

Q: You just mentioned Srečko Kosovel as main source of inspiration. While he’s a kind of Slovenian icon of poetry, I guess he remained unknown for a lot of readers and people. Tell us a bit more about him, his work and the influence he had on your work as musicians?

Aldo: Srečko Kosovel was a strange bird. He died at the age of 22 and as a radical anarchist he was not popular in his time nor is he today in petit bourgeoisie society. Even today he does not have a single monument in the capital of Slovenia and still after four months, our record was not presented on National Radio and Television. No review at all.

From the song “I Protest”:

Everyone of you, sitting in theatres,

bars and coffee houses

and other haunts of pleasure:

I protest!

In pain,

ruthless struggles,

I curse you,

I,

the fallen nation’s

fallen son.

From “Genealogy”:

Slave.

Slave the Servant.

Slave Servantich the Servant.

Slave Slavetich Servantich the Humble.

Slave II.

Slave Humblich III.

Servantich IV.

Janez the Humble, the Craven, the Grandiose.

(Janez is common name in Slovenia like John in GB)

He was also a strong critic of hypocrisy of politicians and economic elite

From “Destructions”:

Millions are dying,

but Europe is lying.

To destroy, To destroy, To destroy!

From “Kons”:

Civilization lacks a heart.

The heart lacks civilization.

An exhausted struggle.

Evacuation of souls.

The evening burns like fire.

The dead is Europe!

Mercy! Mercy!

Q: So we easily can consider “Proti Kapitulaciji” as an ‘engaged’ work; a reflection about the social-, cultural-, artistic- and political situation of the ‘great’ Europe! What did you try to express?

Aldo: After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we thought that better days were coming for Europe. But we witnessed a war in Yugoslavia in which 140 thousand people were killed, we saw the lies about WMD in Iraq (courtesy of Tony Blair and other bandits), then Libya,  Syria, now we have Brexit, the rise of right wing nationalists in almost every country, xenophobia, hate fake news, egoistic, competitive selfie narcissistic culture, stupid reality shows, uninterested pacific hipster youth promoting stupid values, corporative ‘truth’….

Q: You often have been considered as a ‘controversial’ band because of your imagery and themes, but in the end it was all about artistic freedom. I can imagine it hasn’t been always easy to handle and do you think things have changed today when it comes to artistic freedom and controversy?

Aldo: We think that today is even worse, since Thatcher/ Reagan neo-liberal politics occupied everything, media and political floor. We were always fans of critical artists like Woody Guthrie, sixties music, punk, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Test Department… Today it would be impossible for such artists to reach the wider audience. You just have to compare top charts from the past and today.

Q: The EBM community recently celebrated the international EBM day (-24/2 – February, 24th).. What does EBM mean to you today and what did you keep in mind from the early years of EBM when you were considered as ‘pioneers’?

Aldo: Like every style of music, EBM also had a limited period of duration. First comes the innovative, creative period, then the commercial one, and then the decline, just repetition of itself. We are very proud that we were part of this innovative period, but after so many years we are not the same persons anymore and the world has changed. EBM in some way become EDM and 95% of music today is made on computer. We were one of the first musicians that had an Atari on the stage.;) Today a smart phone is 1.000.000 times more powerful than Atari and now you can make music on a smart phone on the beach and this is very nice. In a very near future there will be Artificial Intelligence composing music to suit your personal taste, Artificial Intelligence will write books to suit your tastes… Most people will be just good consumers controlled by multinational corporations 😉

Inferno Sound Diaries

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

www.side-line.com

Out now is the brand new Moby video for the track “Mere Anarch”. This is the second track, after “Like A Motherless Child”, released from Moby’s forthcoming album, “Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt”, due out on March 2 via Mute Records.

You can watch the video below.

In related news, Moby is caught up in a scandal due to his previous claims that he had been approached by friends in the CIA, which told him to post and spread content on the so-called Trump-Russian collusion allegations through social media.

But it looks like it that Moby has been duped into spreading fake news. Since then he has been trying to downplay his first claims saying it was just a prank. It looks however that he has been a bit too eager to spread unverified news, “in order to show off” so some fellow label artists told us.

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

It always is something special when interviewing artists you know personally. It even becomes a bit tricky when you like the persons hiding behind the artists, but you don’t necessarily like their music. With Nine Seconds it’s totally different. They’ve released a new and simply great album entitled “Agent Provocateur”. It also is their first album on Infacted Recordings, which reveals a harder sound mixing EBM and electro-pop. I get in touch with singer Oliver Spring (ex-Sleepwalk), Thomas Kowalzik and René Ebner (both ex-No Comment).

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: You guys are already involvement with music since quite a long time. So how did No Comment finally get in touch with the singer of Sleepwalk to set up Nine Seconds and what kind of sound did you’ve in mind when setting up the band?

Thomas: Rene and I made once a remix for the Sleepwalk track “Wheel Of Time’, so we did know Oli virtually. On the European tour we made with No Comment supporting Apoptygma Berzerk we then met in person. When I moved to Berne, Switzerland, I remembered Oli was living there and so we met for a beer. By then he had already left Sleepwalk and we started with recording vocals for his new project Tear!down. Since the chemistry between Rene, Oli and me was very good, we decided to go back to the roots. So we started NINE SECONDS as a project with 3 boys, that just want to have fun and create a mixture of EBM/harder electro-pop. Because this is the music we grew up with and which touches us most.

Q: You’re now active since a few couple of years. How do you look back at previous albums and how did you finally come to sign on Infacted Recordings?

Oli: We like all our albums, but it is hard nowadays to get attention as a new band, especially with the small record company we were signed to. So the next step was to get in touch with Torben from Infacted Recordings, who was immediately interested in NINE SECONDS.

Q: Who’s this ‘agent provocateur’ and what does the clip of the song reflect about the title and maybe lyrical themes you’re dealing with?

Rene: An agent provocateur is a double agent. For us this is just an impersonation of somebody that tells one thing, but does the other. There are lot of agent provocateurs around today, Trump for example follows an own agenda. The world is full of fake news and the people who spread it are not stupid, they also follow their own agenda, like an agent provocateur. So basically the song is about honesty and how you can proof trust.

Q: I experienced “Agent Provocateur” as your hardest album to date and in a way a bit like you reinvented your sound. What’s your impression about this evolution and what have been the possible sources of inspiration?

Thomas: With No Comment we made the typical evolution every EBM band makes from hard electronics to synth-pop to guitar-pop, and we try to avoid this for NINE SECONDS. So we always try not to sound too soft and since you think “Agent Provocateur” is our hardest album I think we did well (laugh).

Q: Sound-wise “Agent Provocateur” is moving on the edge between EBM and electro-pop, which in a way (and only for the influences) is a bit comparable to the early years of No Comment, don’t you think? But how do you see your evolution as artists all over the years?

Thomas: You’re completely right, since the old No Comment records like “Drawback Infect” were our reference, when we created NINE SECONDS. And since we made all this artist evolution with No Comment before, we don’t need to prove, that we’re able to write a catchy pop song. For us it is more important – since we’re getting older – that we are still able to record a kick-ass electro-track.

Q: Thomas and René, you’re now making music together for about 30 years, right? What makes the chemistry between you both and how does it feel working with Oliver today? What brings the future?

Rene: Yes, that is right, we know each other now for more than 40 years, when we started playing football in the same club and make music for more than 30 years. So I guess, we’re friends. With Oli it has not changed, we’re just 3 old boys with the same music taste, no one has a big ego, and we have fun together. Since bands often fail because of personal problems we were sure, this is not going to happen with NINE SECONDS and that is why we started it.

Thomas: The only discussion we regularly have, is when it comes to football, Oli hates the teams we support, but since our teams mostly win, Rene and me are happy with that.

Oli: Rene and Thomas are just suppressing all the defeats of their teams, but I remember them all. So I’m happy, too.

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

KMFDM are preparing to release their first new studio album in over 3 years. “Hell Yeah” will be released on August 18th via earMUSIC and is their twentieth album to date.

“Hell Yeah” was released earlier as an EP to whet the appetite of the fans. You can expect a mix of ultra-heavy beats and Sascha Konietzko’s trademark cynical lyrics on the new album. The album ranges from songs that are sometimes political (“Fake News”, “Total State Machine”) or just simply love related (“Murder my heart”).

The cover artwork of course has been created by Aidan Hughes aka Brute. Available on CD and 2LP vinyl you can order the new album right here (check the tracklist here).

The core line-up of this album consists of Sascha Konietzko, Lucia Cifarelli, Chris Harms and Andy Selway. The band invited also a few guest musicians: Anabella Asia, Gared Dirge, Mika Harms, Jules Hodgson, Abby Martin, Doug Wimbish and Sin Quirin.

Here’s a video for “Hell Yeah”.

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