I genuinely never expected to return to Nocturnal Culture Night. I had visited Deutzen once, in 2023, and already then the sheer scale of the festival impressed me: several stages operating simultaneously, a programme dense enough to render any attempt at complete coverage slightly absurd, and an audience whose warmth remained one of my clearest memories afterwards. Three years later I found myself there again, towards the end of another long summer spent moving between festivals. For me, NCN effectively closes the outdoor festival season, although “closing” seems an inadequate word for an event that still requires its visitors to make decisions at the speed of something in full acceleration.

What is peculiar about NCN is that its physical scale and its social scale seem almost unrelated. The Kulturpark contains several music stages, spaces of very different dimensions and enough simultaneous programming to construct several entirely different versions of the same weekend, yet the atmosphere remains remarkably relaxed. That contrast was already one of the things I remembered from 2023, and this year it became even more apparent.

I have written many times that every festival develops its own social language, but the differences become particularly visible when several are visited within the same summer. At Wave-Gotik-Treffen or Castle Party, clothing itself becomes part of the artistic vocabulary: people construct silhouettes, visual references and sometimes entire characters, so that the audience forms a parallel exhibition of creativity. NCN feels different. This is neither criticism nor a claim that one form of participation is more authentic than another, but attention in Deutzen seemed to travel outwards rather than towards the self. People were there to hear music, catch up with friends, eat and drink together, dance, talk, discover bands and conduct the sort of informal networking that has always existed in music scenes whether anyone calls it networking or not.

For me, as a photographer, that difference became unexpectedly important. An extraordinary outfit already supplies the architecture of an image: colour, line, texture and shape can make a photograph visually compelling before any meaningful contact with the person has occurred. At NCN I found myself looking much more closely at faces. Personality appeared in concentration during a song, amusement between friends, exhaustion, affection, curiosity or the sudden transformation of expression when somebody recognised the opening seconds of something they loved. The portraits demanded slightly more patience because there was less external spectacle to depend upon; I had to wait for something of the actual person to become visible. That made photographing the audience harder, but ultimately more rewarding. People seemed wonderfully unpretentious and considerably more interested in what was happening around them than in attracting attention towards themselves.

Friday

My festival began with HORSKH, and there was never much uncertainty about that choice. I had first seen the French trio after they had been recommended to me for Castle Party, so by NCN they had already become one of those fixed points around which I constructed the rest of a schedule. Their combination of industrial electronics, guitars, live percussion and vocals works because aggression is never treated as an end in itself. The music is extremely disciplined underneath its apparent violence: sequences are exact, rhythmic structures are engineered with considerable care, and then everything performed above them seems determined to interfere with that control.

Onstage, this becomes intensely physical. The guitars do not merely thicken the electronic foundation but push against it, while the vocals repeatedly introduce a kind of organised instability that makes the songs feel much less obedient than their underlying structures actually are. Their interpretation of The Prodigy’s “Breathe” remains a particularly clever choice because it exposes a lineage instead of functioning merely as a familiar cover. The Prodigy understood that electronic music could possess the confrontation and bodily violence of rock without ceasing to be electronic; HORSKH take that principle into a harsher contemporary vocabulary. After almost six hours on a bus to Leipzig, I could hardly have asked for a more efficient recalibration of the nervous system.

I then moved to the much smaller Kulturbühne for frequen-C & TC75, the collaboration between Christian Bergmann and Tino Claus. I have followed and supported this project for some time, and what continues to interest me is how much room exists inside electronics that can nevertheless hit very hard. Christian’s structures are disciplined and precise, while Tino’s vocal presence brings a completely different temperature into them; the result combines electronic control with a performer who is visibly communicating rather than merely executing a vocal part.

The visual component worked beautifully without competing with the music, and the small Kulturbühne gradually turned into a very efficient dance floor. Something that happened away from the stage later gave me another way of thinking about what I had just watched. Tino participates in what sometimes seems like an improbable number of musical projects, so I asked him how many he would actually count as his own if we excluded occasional guest appearances. We eventually arrived at roughly five. I then asked whether he was ever afraid that dividing himself between so many different contexts might dilute his artistic identity.

He came back to the question the following day and said no, because every project is different. It sounds simple, but the answer stayed with me because creative identity does not necessarily become more concentrated by being restricted to one context. It can become more exact through contrast, as long as each collaboration develops its own internal logic rather than becoming another receptacle for identical habits. frequen-C & TC75 have exactly that distinct emotional temperature, hard without being merely aggressive, controlled without becoming emotionally sealed, and sufficiently communicative that the question of dilution becomes rather irrelevant once they are actually playing.

The schedule then forced a split between Hinfort and Jesus On Extasy. Hinfort shifted the afternoon away from HORSKH’s physical aggression towards something considerably more inward. Florian Kerezovic’s relatively young Cologne project works with the familiar materials of post-punk and darkwave, cold bass, restrained electronics, melancholy and a low vocal register, but onstage the important element was not genre recognition so much as composure. There was no attempt to force an early festival audience into attention through exaggerated movement or artificial drama. Instead, the songs established their own pressure gradually, the bass carrying much of the forward movement while the vocals remained darker and more introspective above it.

What interested me was the contrast between that emotional reserve and the clarity of the performance. Hinfort did not sound tentative despite the project’s relatively short history; the musical language already felt remarkably defined, yet not so finished that it had lost the possibility of development. There was something attractive in watching a project still consolidating itself publicly, where the identity was already recognisable but did not yet feel hardened into a formula.

I saw only part of Jesus On Extasy, but even that fragment was difficult to mistake for anybody else. The performance was loud, restless and happily excessive, driven by the friction between hard guitars and electronics rather than by an attempt to make one disappear inside the other. There was a genuine sense of emotional disorder onstage, not because the music lacked discipline, but because the musicians seemed continually willing to push the songs beyond the neat boundaries suggested by their structures.

The result was extremely energetic and at moments almost chaotic in appearance, with movement, guitar force and vocal intensity creating a show that felt much less controlled than most of the electronic performances around it. That theatrical excess is part of the appeal: Jesus On Extasy do not seem particularly interested in the cool distance associated with much dark electronics. What I caught was hot-blooded, physical and deliberately larger than life.

With Melotron, the energy took a completely different form. I only stayed for part of the performance, but the audience reaction was immediate, and it was easy to understand why. There is an enormous difference between a band merely possessing a long catalogue and one knowing how those songs now function in relation to an audience that has lived with them for years. Melotron have that knowledge.

Andy Krüger’s presence was particularly effective because he never appeared to be fighting the scale of the Amphibühne. The performance did not need exaggerated movement to seem substantial; voice, melody and recognition were already doing the work. What I remember most is the collective response, people singing, moving and reacting to songs whose emotional vocabulary is deeply familiar by now. It was energetic without becoming frantic and confident without slipping into routine, the sort of festival performance where experience becomes visible not as professionalism for its own sake but as an unusually precise understanding of how to hold a large audience.

Friday ended unusually early for me. I had been awake since 04:30, spent nearly six hours travelling by FlixBus and gone almost immediately into festival work, so eventually my carefully constructed running order collided with basic physiology. I badly wanted to see Sierra Veins later that night, but the body vetoed the plan. Later I learned that heavy rain had complicated proceedings and produced delays, which made going back to rest easier to justify retrospectively, although not less disappointing. Festival timetables encourage the fantasy that the body is simply another logistical factor; sooner or later it tends to remind us that it possesses final authority.

Saturday

Saturday began before noon, with Rina Pavar providing one of the most elegant openings I encountered during the weekend. Associated with the Cold Transmission orbit, her music works within coldwave and dark electronics, but reducing it to either category misses the quality that matters most in performance: the relationship between an orderly electronic framework and a voice that is allowed to remain unmistakably human within it.

There is fragility in her delivery, but fragility should not be confused with weakness. Pavar does not treat uncertainty or restraint as shortcomings to be compensated for through greater volume; she lets them remain audible while the electronics underneath give those qualities direction and form. On Parkbühne the effect was extraordinarily elegant. The songs retained something private even while being projected into an outdoor festival, which takes far more confidence than simply making everything larger. The beauty came from proportion: voice, synths and movement all seemed to understand exactly how much space they required.

I also managed a short look at TonFehler, and the contrast was considerable. Their electronic body music is deliberately direct, but what makes the project more interesting than another exercise in hard beats is the presence of irony and social observation. The structures move efficiently, while the German-language vocal delivery allows humour and criticism to coexist without turning either into cabaret commentary placed outside the music.

Their performance immediately introduced a certain mischievousness into the day. The beats remained forceful enough to carry the set, but the interaction between the performers prevented the music from becoming another exercise in stern electronic discipline. Rather than standing rigidly inside the machinery, TonFehler seemed willing to acknowledge its absurdities, which gave the short part I witnessed a personality disproportionate to the amount of time I actually spent there.

Ambassador21 increased the physical temperature dramatically. Natasha A Twentyone and Alexey Protasov have spent more than two decades combining industrial electronics, rhythmic noise and punk hostility into something designed less to seduce than to confront. What can initially sound chaotic is in fact highly organised: repetition, compressed rhythm and the vocal interaction create a structure whose aggression is far more deliberate than its surface suggests.

Even during a relatively short encounter, the punk element remained unmistakable, not because of costume or borrowed iconography but because of the project’s fundamental refusal of politeness. Natasha’s delivery in particular attacks the tracks as much as it inhabits them, while Alexey supplies another point of pressure. The vocals are not placed elegantly above the electronics; they strike into them. The performance felt angry, but not vaguely so. There was purpose behind the aggression and sufficient control underneath it to prevent intensity from becoming noise without direction.

Another direct clash followed between Ozibut and Strikkland. I saw Ozibut only briefly, but this was one of those encounters where a few minutes were sufficient to establish that something unusual was happening. Musically, darkdance, synthpunk, EBM and cold electronic structures collided with an almost cabaret-like instinct for exaggeration, while visually the project was immediately distinctive.

What caught my eye was that the appearance did not seem designed merely to make a memorable photograph. The eccentricity belonged to the performance itself: expression, movement and styling all appeared to share the same slightly grotesque, humorous and decadent logic as the music. In full daylight, where many dark electronic projects lose part of their visual vocabulary, Ozibut remained strangely convincing because the personality did not depend on darkness to exist. I left far too quickly to write about the set as a whole, but not too quickly to know that I want a proper encounter next time.

I left because Strikkland were one of my priorities, and the larger Waldbühne revealed something I had already enjoyed about them on a smaller stage but perhaps had not fully appreciated: humour is not an accessory to the Swedish duo but one of the methods through which they understand EBM itself. Their music is genuinely hard-hitting, full of muscular sequences, direct rhythmic structures and Henrik Johansson’s forceful vocal delivery, but they refuse the peculiar genre assumption that musical seriousness requires permanent solemnity.

Henrik changed clothes, appeared in extravagant red fur, exaggerated poses, altered lines, used provocative gestures and played with Swedish and German symbolism and declarations of friendship between the two countries. In less capable hands this could easily have reduced the concert to parody. Instead, it worked because the music underneath was far too good to need irony as an excuse. They were not laughing at EBM from a safe distance; they were playing with conventions they clearly understand and love.

Afterwards Henrik told me that when he and Henric Ceder started the band, already approaching their fifties, they had briefly imagined becoming the “gothiest” band possible before looking at one another and essentially asking whom they thought they were fooling. That decision to interfere with the convention rather than impersonate it seems fundamental to Strikkland. The joke works because there is affection underneath it. Full afternoon sun is rarely generous to music associated with smoke, darkness and club lighting, yet here it almost improved the performance by exposing the absurdity more clearly. Self-awareness is considerably harder to perform convincingly than genre seriousness, and Strikkland manage to combine both.

AD:Key then took over the Amphibühne, and Andrea and René Nowotny delivered exactly the kind of controlled explosion I had hoped for. Their music has always depended on more than alternating female and male vocals; what gives the project its personality is the constant redistribution of energy between two people who know one another intimately enough to respond without making that response look rehearsed.

On a stage as large as the Amphibühne, this became particularly effective. Large spaces can expose electronic acts whose stage vocabulary consists merely of enlarging familiar gestures, whereas Andrea and René filled the space through actual communication. Andrea’s performance became increasingly animated until she moved into the audience, while René remained above onstage, and the physical separation paradoxically strengthened their interplay. Suddenly the crowd itself occupied the space between them. The rhythms remained rigid enough to provide the EBM architecture, but the human exchange continually disrupted any possibility of mechanical impersonality. It was an enormous, joyful release of energy and one of my strongest concerts of the weekend.

I then divided my attention between The Awakening and SIIE. I only caught part of The Awakening, but what stayed with me were the guitars: living, breathing guitars in the most literal musical sense, with sustain and space allowed to become part of the emotional information rather than simply supplying rock weight. Ashton Nyte’s long-running project has moved through gothic rock and darkwave for decades, yet the fragment I saw felt less concerned with genre than with atmosphere produced organically through musicianship.

Nyte’s voice gave those guitars a poetic quality, and for a few minutes the whole festival seemed to breathe differently after so much sequenced electronic precision. The guitars possessed weight, certainly, but also air around them, allowing the songs to remain expansive rather than merely loud. I would not pretend to reconstruct the complete concert from the portion I witnessed, but those minutes were enough to make the contrast with the surrounding programme especially valuable.

SIIE offered almost the reverse kind of tension to The Awakening. Their electronic language brings darkwave, EBM and techno into contact with French-language vocals, but what made the short part I saw particularly memorable was the way the visual identity altered the emotional reading of the music. The mask immediately creates distance: instead of presenting the performer as a conventional frontperson whose face supplies the obvious emotional access point, SIIE partially remove that route and force attention back towards gesture, voice, movement and sound. The result is strangely intimate despite the concealment. The mask does not make the performance colder; paradoxically, it makes the listener search more carefully for expression elsewhere.

And the music itself was genuinely beautiful. Beneath the direct, physical pulse there is a remarkable melodic sensitivity, with electronics that can feel severe one moment and unexpectedly delicate the next. The French vocal delivery adds another layer of elegance and slight detachment, while the beat keeps everything anchored in the body. What I liked most was the contradiction between concealment and emotional accessibility: visually, SIIE create distance, yet musically they invite the listener much closer. Even during the short fragment I caught, the performance felt carefully conceived as a whole rather than as music with an aesthetic added around it, with mask, movement, voice and electronics all contributing to the same beautifully controlled atmosphere.

Schöngeist brought another kind of theatricality to the Amphibühne. Their dark-rock vocabulary allows broad guitars and emphatic rhythms to coexist with more melodic and almost cinematic elements, and the large stage suited a project that is not embarrassed by dramatic presentation. What prevented the material from becoming generic was the contrast within it: harder structures were repeatedly interrupted or complicated by more lyrical textures, while Timur Karakus’ vocal delivery carried enough character to avoid reducing German-language dark rock to its most familiar gestures.

The band looked comfortable with scale. Some groups visibly attempt to fill a large stage by increasing the quantity of movement; Schöngeist seemed more interested in using space compositionally, allowing the guitars, voice and more delicate textures to expand and contract around one another. The result was dramatic but not ridiculously inflated, and the performance benefited from the fact that they do not appear embarrassed by emotional or visual grandeur when the songs require it.

With Menticide, virtually all of that ornament disappeared again. Their set was based on something more elemental: repetition, pressure and the authority of rhythm. The old-school EBM vocabulary was obvious, but onstage it felt less nostalgic than brutally functional. Sequences were allowed to repeat until they acquired physical weight, while Johan Damm’s vocal delivery became almost another rhythmic device inside the construction.

What mattered was the economy. There was very little unnecessary information in the performance, and precisely because of that, small changes carried enormous effect. A shift in vocal intensity, an additional layer or a harder pulse could alter the entire atmosphere. On the Amphibühne, where elaborate productions can easily dominate attention, Menticide demonstrated the opposite principle: sometimes very little is required if every element has enough authority. There was also enough grime within the control to prevent the music from becoming a laboratory reconstruction of old-school body music.

I also caught Debdepan only briefly on Parkbühne, but they made an immediate impression. The Margate-based project is centred around Chelsea Tolhurst and Grace Bontoft, childhood friends who formed the band after writing together during lockdown, with Chelsea handling guitar and lead vocals and Grace bass and vocals; onstage they frequently expand the duo format with live drums. Their music has developed from the darker, more ethereal mood of the early Omen material towards something increasingly difficult to place neatly between dark alternative rock, post-punk, grunge, art-pop and dance-oriented electronics.

What I saw at NCN had exactly that appealing refusal to settle into a single category. There was considerable weight in the bass and guitars, but the music never became conventionally heavy; rhythm remained extremely important, giving the songs a restless, almost danceable momentum underneath the darker guitar textures. The vocals added another contrast, capable of sounding restrained and slightly detached before suddenly becoming much more immediate, while the musicians appeared completely comfortable allowing rougher edges to remain visible rather than polishing everything into immaculate dark-pop surfaces.

Their more recent material makes particular sense in that context. The 2025 Lovers & Others EP moves through grunge-inflected guitars, electronic pulses, heavy rhythm and a much more visceral form of alternative pop, with songs such as “The Girl” and “Habit” relying on sharp contrasts between apparent restraint and sudden bursts of physical force. On Parkbühne, even the few minutes I caught had that same quality: young, direct and slightly unruly, but with enough control underneath to make the collision of influences feel intentional rather than accidental.

I did not stay long enough to judge the complete set, but this was another of those NCN moments where a short photographic stop became a genuine discovery. Debdepan had personality immediately, both visually and musically, and there was something refreshing about a band entering a dark-scene festival without sounding as though they had constructed themselves specifically to satisfy the expectations of that scene.

Another overlap required movement between The Beauty Of Gemina and Lovataraxx. I saw only part of The Beauty Of Gemina, but the fragment was beautiful. The guitars were much more physical than the word “melancholic” might suggest, pounding and expansive without turning the material into conventional hard rock, while Michael Sele’s voice brought an entirely different emotional texture above them.

His delivery has something almost literary about it. The words seem considered not only for what they say but for how their sound changes the emotional meaning of the instrumentation around them. That created a beautiful opposition onstage: muscular guitars underneath, poetic vocals above, neither cancelling the other. The music could become forceful and still retain enormous inwardness. I would have liked considerably more time with the performance, because what I heard suggested one of those concerts in which the power arrives not through obvious aggression but through the coexistence of physical sound and reflective writing.

Lovataraxx approached physicality through reduction instead and were among the most elegant performances of the weekend for me. Their coldwave and minimal electronic language can initially appear restrained, but onstage that restraint becomes surprisingly energetic. There is excellent interplay between the performers, and rather than standing separately inside predefined roles, they seem continually to react to the same pulse.

That interaction gives the music a warmth that is not always immediately apparent within its colder surfaces. The structures are reduced enough that every movement and every change in vocal or electronic emphasis becomes visible, while the beat remains sufficiently insistent to keep the audience physically involved. I found the whole thing extremely graceful but never passive; the beauty came from precision and communication rather than decoration.

The Amphibühne later moved into the much denser artistic world of Samsas Traum. My own attention was primarily on Samsas Traum because I had particularly wanted to see Alexander Kaschte’s project again. My previous encounter had been years ago at Amphi Festival, and I had also interviewed him for Side-Line more recently, so this was one of those concerts in which past impressions, recent conversation and present performance inevitably entered the same frame.

Samsas Traum have never seemed entirely contained by the idea of a band playing songs. The project operates more like an extended artistic system in which music, literature, poetry, imagery and a dense network of references continually interfere with one another. The musical vocabulary has shifted radically across the years, through metal, electronics, gothic forms, orchestral elements and theatrical songwriting, but the continuity lies in Kaschte’s tendency to construct worlds rather than isolated tracks.

The beautiful Amphibühne lighting mattered enormously because Samsas Traum benefit from visual depth, yet it was not decoration. Light, language, gesture and sound appeared to participate in the same construction. Kaschte’s theatricality has always been pronounced, but what saves it from empty theatrical effect is the density behind it: phrases carry literary and philosophical associations, melodic beauty can coexist with violence, and apparent grandeur can suddenly expose something intimate, grotesque or painfully human underneath.

Calling this merely “poetic” is almost insufficient because poetry here is not synonymous with prettiness. It is compression, allowing several emotional registers and possible meanings to occupy a single image without obliging the listener to resolve them. Seeing the project again after so many years was therefore less like revisiting an old band than returning to an artistic language that had continued changing while I was away from it.

What I found especially moving was that the project still seemed capable of revision. I was not watching a beautifully preserved version of something I remembered from Amphi. Kaschte had changed, the language had changed and naturally I had changed as well. Yet the fundamental proposition remained recognisable: Samsas Traum as a place where music and language are not parallel components but parts of the same act of storytelling. In the Amphibühne light, the result felt less like a concert built around isolated songs than a temporary piece of theatre assembled

ACTORS presented a rather different logistical problem. Our Love Will Live Forever had been released only the previous day, on 4 September, so this was not simply another festival appearance by an established band but one of the first opportunities to hear material that had quite literally just entered the world. Having recently spoken with ACTORS about the record, I was especially interested in what would happen when songs I knew through headphones and conversation were suddenly placed in front of an audience.

The Parkbühne, however, was almost comically inadequate for the level of interest. ACTORS have long since grown beyond the dimensions of a stage that intimate, and with a new album arriving at precisely the same moment the problem became very physical: people packed tightly around the stage and sightlines disappeared almost immediately. At points it was practically impossible to watch what was happening unless you happened to occupy the right few square metres. There were technical problems as well, which complicated matters further, although neither the crowd nor the band appeared particularly willing to surrender the concert to them. If anything, the circumstances demonstrated rather efficiently that ACTORS now occupy a very different position from the one such a stage assignment might suggest.

What I could properly observe was interesting precisely because the new material did not arrive carrying an enormous sign announcing a new era. Jason Corbett and the band did not turn vulnerability into spectacle or insist upon a dramatic rupture with what came before. The songs entered the existing ACTORS vocabulary naturally: the visual precision and instinct for melodic shape remained intact, but beneath those carefully constructed surfaces there was a greater acceptance of instability, as though polish was no longer being asked to conceal quite so much.

Corbett’s delivery remained controlled rather than demonstrative, Shannon Hemmett supplied both electronic detail and an essential visual counterweight, while Kendall Wooding and Adam Fink gave the material considerably more bodily weight than its studio elegance might initially suggest. That contrast became particularly useful in these less-than-ideal circumstances. The performance could not depend entirely on perfect presentation – the stage was overcrowded from the audience perspective and the technical conditions were not flawless – yet the songs still survived contact with that disorder.

Leaving Parkbühne afterwards proved almost as complicated as watching the concert in the first place. The crowd had become so dense around ACTORS that simply working my way out and across the festival grounds took considerably longer than expected, which meant I reached SKYND very late and managed only two songs. I would therefore not pretend to review the set as a whole; this was genuinely a glimpse rather than a concert I properly experienced.

Even within those two songs, however, SKYND’s visual and musical identity was impossible to mistake. Since forming in 2017, the project has built its work around real criminal cases, combining industrial electronics, metal weight and heavily processed vocals with a visual language that places the singer somewhere between narrator, witness and deliberately constructed character. What struck me immediately was the precision of that construction. The make-up, movement, voice and sound do not feel like separate elements assembled around the songs; they appear to belong to the same unsettling system.

The vocals can move from something almost childlike or eerily detached into much harsher distorted registers, while the electronics underneath retain a heavy, deliberate pulse. What little I saw was intensely controlled visually, yet the subject matter continually destabilises that control because it refers back to actual human violence rather than fictional horror. Around the time of NCN, SKYND had also moved into material dealing with abuse protected by power and public status, with “Jimmy Savile” followed by “Johnny Kitagawa”, which suggested another shift in emphasis within the project.

Two songs are nowhere near enough to judge how successfully the complete set developed that material, and I will not pretend otherwise. What I saw was visually striking, sonically heavy and immediately recognisable; mostly, though, the experience became another illustration of NCN’s logistical cruelty. Sometimes the running order does not simply force a choice between bands. First it gives you ACTORS on a stage far too small for the audience they attract, and then makes escaping that audience part of the journey to the next concert.

Sunday

Sunday opened with Zalvox, and after two very dense days this was exactly the kind of performance I needed. Ribi’s electronics have an unusually tactile quality despite being carefully controlled, while Dorain’s voice gives the project its emotional centre. What continually surprises me about them is how naturally those two components converse.

Nothing seems overperformed. Ribi reacts to Dorain’s presence, Dorain inhabits rather than simply sings over the electronics, and small exchanges between them become part of the atmosphere. Her voice was especially beautiful at NCN. There is fragility there, but also confidence and considerable control, and the contrast with the electronic structures creates warmth without diminishing their precision.

The result was atmospheric without becoming sleepy, intimate without being withdrawn, and sufficiently detailed to pull an already festival-tired attention span back into focus. Their communication is one of the loveliest aspects of the project because it never feels as though one person supplies “the music” while the other supplies “the voice”; both participate in directing the emotional movement of the same material.

Grundeis then occupied the Amphibühne, and the contrast could hardly have been stronger. The Hamburg band move through post-punk, shoegaze, noise and gothic guitar textures, but what interests me is not the number of genres available for description; it is the way those textures continually change the emotional pressure of the songs.

On the largest stage, their handling of guitar density became especially impressive. Shoegaze can become indistinct outdoors because so much of its intimacy depends on saturation, while skeletal post-punk can seem disproportionately small once expanded into open space. Grundeis managed to preserve both density and definition. Layers of guitar accumulated, withdrew and blurred without becoming an anonymous wall, the rhythm section maintained genuine forward momentum, and Laura Müller’s vocals cut through without needing to overpower everything around them.

The stage suited them surprisingly well. Their music expanded into the space rather than merely occupying it, and there was enough movement inside the guitar structures to keep the performance engaging without resorting to excessive theatricality. It was post-punk in one of its more convincing contemporary forms: informed by history, certainly, but far too alive to resemble historical reconstruction.

The schedule then created an impossible choice between Lovelorn Dolls and Mayflower Madame, so I only saw short sections of each. Neither deserves the false certainty of a complete concert review based on a few photographed songs, but both left very clear impressions.

The Brussels project Lovelorn Dolls has always placed electronic gothic rock, heavier guitars and Kristell Lowagie’s expressive voice inside a visual universe where childhood imagery, dolls and apparent innocence can coexist with considerably darker emotional material. The short portion I witnessed still carried that tension strongly. There was theatrical colour, but also a much heavier musical foundation than the visual language might initially suggest.

Lowagie’s voice was the element binding those contradictions together. She can appear fragile one moment and considerably more forceful the next without either register feeling theatrical for its own sake. There was emotional intensity in the performance that made leaving particularly frustrating, and knowing the difficult history behind the project’s current chapter inevitably added another layer without needing to dominate the experience.

Mayflower Madame, from Oslo, created an entirely different kind of atmosphere. Their guitars seem to expand horizontally, creating a large sonic field rather than simply increasing volume, while the rhythm section continuously pulls that field forward.

The short portion I heard had an almost narcotic quality. Vocals were partially embedded inside the guitar texture, giving the impression that the songs were emerging from within the atmosphere rather than being placed over it. Yet the music never became static. There was always enough rhythmic tension beneath the psychedelic and shoegazing elements to prevent the set from dissolving into beautiful haze. It was dark, hypnotic and immediately distinctive, exactly the sort of performance where leaving after only a few songs feels particularly unfair.

The same problem returned with Mildreda and The Foreign Resort. Mildreda had been particularly high on my list because Realities had appeared only days before NCN, and I had already spent an unusual amount of time with the material, first while reviewing the album and then while discussing it with Jan Dewulf. That inevitably changes the experience of a concert. Instead of encountering the songs as unfamiliar objects, I arrived knowing many of their structures and emotional tensions in considerable detail, which made it fascinating to watch what happened when music I had previously examined almost microscopically was released into a festival environment.

What happened was not simply that the new material became louder. Onstage, Mildreda changed its proportions. Rhythms that can function almost architecturally on record became intensely physical, harsher electronic textures acquired actual impact, and Dewulf’s voice moved much closer to the centre of the experience. The new songs contain considerable vulnerability, but the performance never treated that vulnerability as fragility; if anything, the emotional openness made the aggression feel more purposeful. There was real force in the set, yet the quieter and more delicate passages retained their significance precisely because they were surrounded by so much pressure.

The circumstances made this even more interesting. Mildreda had to perform in uncompromising daylight, which is almost an act of sabotage against the usual visual grammar of dark electro. There was no darkness to extend the atmosphere, no possibility of disappearing into smoke, projections or carefully sculpted light, and therefore very little external assistance available to the music. Instead of weakening the performance, the exposure made its internal construction easier to perceive. Changes in density, rhythm and vocal intensity had to carry the dramatic weight themselves, and they did so remarkably well.

What I appreciated most was the sense that this was not a carefully preserved studio object being reproduced for an audience. Dewulf seemed fully inside the material, allowing it to become rougher, more immediate and more physically animated than its recorded version while still preserving the contradictions that make Mildreda interesting in the first place: severity beside vulnerability, precision beside abrasion and a very private emotional language projected through something much larger and more forceful. The daylight may have denied the band an obvious visual atmosphere, but it also proved that they did not need one.

My glimpse of The Foreign Resort was similarly brief, but the band’s physical understanding of post-punk was obvious immediately. Their guitars produce enormous atmosphere without sacrificing attack, while the rhythm underneath is far more urgent than the melancholy surface might initially suggest.

Even during those few songs, there was a strong sensation of movement. The sound expanded outward, but the pulse continually dragged it forward, creating the tension that makes The Foreign Resort more interesting than a purely atmospheric guitar band. I would have liked to stay because the performance seemed to be building rather than simply presenting its character immediately, but NCN’s simultaneous programme made that impossible.

One performance I deliberately refused to leave was Supersimmetria at Kulturbühne. Armando Alibrandi’s project occupies the borderlands between industrial techno, atmospheric electronics and detailed experimental construction, but its real fascination comes from gradual transformation.

The music does not depend on theatrical drops or obvious moments announcing that something important is about to happen. Rhythmic cells appear and begin changing function, frequencies thicken, microscopic details become suddenly structural, and only retrospectively does one realise how far a seemingly stable pattern has travelled. There is substantial intellectual precision involved, yet none of it feels academic because the body is implicated from the beginning.

This was one of those sets where I eventually put the camera away because continuing to photograph became a less adequate form of attention than dancing. The Kulturbühne’s relatively compact dimensions concentrated the sound beautifully, and the whole performance developed into that rare territory where analysis and bodily response stop competing. I stayed, I danced, and for music designed around the transformation of repetition, that may be more useful criticism than a catalogue of technical terminology.

Peter Heppner & Band changed the Amphibühne completely. There was already something celebratory in the atmosphere, particularly with Heppner’s birthday immediately approaching, but what made the concert emotional went considerably deeper than the occasion itself.

Some songs eventually stop belonging exclusively to the musicians who created them because listeners absorb them into their own biographies. “Dream Of You”, “Once In A Lifetime” and “Kein Zurück” have long since crossed that threshold. They become attached to relationships, departures, particular rooms, years, people who are no longer present and versions of ourselves we can remember without necessarily wanting to become again.

From my position with the camera, this accumulated history was visible across the Amphibühne. There were raised hands everywhere, people dancing, others almost motionless, and tears in more than one pair of eyes. Heppner’s voice still carries an extraordinary amount of emotional information without requiring theatrical demonstration, and the band gave the material enough scale to inhabit the amphitheatre without turning the songs into inflated festival versions of themselves.

Looking across that sea of heads and moving hands, I had the strange impression that thousands of people were listening to different songs despite the sound system playing exactly the same ones. Each listener had accumulated another version through the years spent with the music. That is one of the rare privileges of songs that survive long enough to acquire biographies beyond those of their authors.

Diary Of Dreams on the Waldbühne produced a related feeling for me, although in a far more private register. It was one of the few concerts at NCN that I experienced from beginning to end, and that completeness mattered because this was not a performance built around a sequence of isolated peaks. It developed gradually, with guitars, electronics, percussion, voice and light continually changing their relative weight, so that the emotional direction emerged through accumulation rather than through obvious theatrical cues.

At one point Adrian Hates raised both arms towards the musicians, and for a few seconds he looked almost like a conductor standing before his own small orchestra. The association with Diary Of Dreams’ work with the Philharmonie Leipzig was unavoidable, but what interested me was not any literal symphonic quality. It was the sense that Hates was directing movement, density and emotional pressure, allowing one element to rise while another withdrew and treating the band less as a collection of separate performers than as parts of a continuously changing structure.

That image also connected with something more personal for me. I have known Diary Of Dreams’ music for such a long time that I no longer hear many of these songs as fixed compositions. They have accompanied different versions of me, and what they meant when I was twenty is not necessarily what they mean now that I am over forty. When I was younger, a Diary Of Dreams concert could feel like being allowed into an intensely emotional private world, almost like opening a book whose atmosphere temporarily replaced everything outside it. Now the experience is more layered. Certain songs return with memories attached; others have gradually detached themselves from the circumstances in which I first heard them and acquired completely different meanings.

That, to me, is one of the more interesting measures of durable songwriting. A great song does not merely preserve the emotional conditions of the time in which it was written, nor does it require the listener to become their younger self again in order to respond to it. It changes because we change. Adrian Hates approaches the material differently after decades of performing it, the musicians around him alter its texture, the audience brings new biographies into the room, and the songs absorb all of that without losing their internal identity.

At NCN I was unusually aware of that movement between past and present. The music still carried the same recognisable emotional language, but my relationship with it had become more reflective, more nostalgic in places and, paradoxically, more open because I no longer needed it to mean exactly what it once meant.

That is why the concert felt so complete. Its emotional weight was not forced; it accumulated through pacing, detail, restraint and the extraordinary continuity of a musical world that has been changing for years without losing its centre. The image of Hates with his arms raised stayed with me because it seemed to capture precisely that process: not an artist preserving his past, but one still conducting it into new forms.

Finally, Die Krupps walked onto the Amphibühne. By then I had spent three days moving between stages, photographing, listening, talking and repeatedly forcing my concentration to reset for another performance. Familiarity should also have worked against them: I have seen Die Krupps enough times that I am not automatically impressed simply because “Nazis Auf Speed”, “Schmutzfabrik” or “Der Amboss” suddenly appear in a set. Yet from the opening sequence it became obvious that this was going to be one of those concerts where prior knowledge makes the reaction more meaningful rather than less.

The sound was phenomenal. Electronics remained hard, sharply defined and rhythmically exact, while the guitars had enormous abrasive weight without collapsing the mix into undifferentiated noise. With Marcel Zürcher back, that part of the sound had genuine physical presence again; his guitar did not simply reinforce the electronic structure but rubbed against it, destabilised it and introduced the friction that is essential to Die Krupps at their best. Their music may be founded on repetition, programming, steel and discipline, but its real power onstage comes from the moment when those controlled systems begin to sound as though they might exceed their own boundaries.

Jürgen Engler was outstanding, not because he resorted to exaggerated gestures but because he seemed constantly aware of the amphitheatre and of how the audience was responding. The chemistry across the band was equally strong, and that communication is one reason the performance could remain extremely tight while still feeling dangerous. The lighting was exceptional, the stage arrangement gave every musician visual and physical room, and the entire production seemed calibrated to increase impact without sacrificing clarity.

What surprised me was how quickly the analytical part of my brain disappeared. I know this material, I know how Die Krupps construct their concerts, and I have photographed them often enough to recognise many of the mechanisms involved, yet somewhere in the middle of the set I stopped evaluating them against previous performances and simply thought: they are astonishingly good tonight. That is a significant reaction precisely because novelty was not available to assist it. The band had to overcome familiarity through quality alone, and they did.

The concert had the physical force of a blow to the solar plexus, but it was not crude force. It was adrenaline organised with remarkable precision: excellent sound, magnificent light, aggressive electronics, guitars with real mass and a band operating with the confidence of musicians who understand their own history without behaving as though they are obliged to reproduce it ceremonially. Nothing about the set suggested a heritage act displaying evidence of its former importance. The songs were attacked rather than preserved.

As a finale to NCN, it was difficult to imagine anything better. The Amphibühne was packed, the audience was completely with them, and all the accumulated fatigue of three festival days was converted for a while into something much simpler and much more physical. I have seen Die Krupps many times; this was nevertheless one of the strongest performances I have ever seen from them, an absolute knockout and an almost perfect way to close the festival.

What remained

What remained with me afterwards was the same thing I had noticed while photographing the audience at the beginning of the weekend. For a festival with such a dense programme, so many stages and enough simultaneous attractions to keep everyone permanently negotiating with their own schedule, NCN feels remarkably unpretentious on the human level.

Every day can produce several completely different versions of the same festival depending on which direction someone turns, and yet the weekend rarely felt like a competition for maximum consumption. People stopped for conversations. Carefully prepared schedules were abandoned because someone had encountered an old friend. Audiences danced without appearing to calculate how visible they were while doing it. People ate together, exchanged recommendations, talked about what they had just seen and allowed the festival to become social rather than merely consumable.

That was also what changed my photography. I searched less for costumes and more for expressions, less for surfaces and more for those brief moments when somebody forgot there was a camera nearby. It required a different form of looking and occasionally a little more patience, but I think that difference explains something essential about NCN. The festival has an enormous programme and a range of music broad enough to move from fragile coldwave to industrial violence, from literary theatricality to post-punk guitars and large-scale synthpop within a matter of hours, yet the infrastructure never entirely becomes the subject.

Returning after 2023 therefore felt less like repeating an experience than correcting an assumption. I had remembered Nocturnal Culture Night primarily as an extraordinarily large and complicated festival that I was glad to have experienced once. Three years later I understood that its scale is only the visible part. Underneath it is a surprisingly human mechanism: musicians moving between very different artistic languages, audiences moving between stages and one another, and a festival whose constant motion somehow still leaves room for people simply to spend time together.

For me, after another long summer of festivals, that combination of musical abundance, physical intensity, curiosity and remarkably uncomplicated human contact was a very good place to finish.

Audience gallery

The full set of audience photographs Karo Kratochwil took at Nocturnal Culture Night 2026.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Mildreda started back in the 90s but remained largely unknown and underappreciated, eventually fading into obscurity—until Jan Dewulf breathed new life into the project around 2009. He has since released his third album on the Dependent label, and Mildreda continues to attract new followers. With this new opus—which can certainly be described as a conceptual work centered on the theme of ‘reality’—the Belgian artist unleashes his creativity across no fewer than 18 tracks.

The conceptual nature of the album is also reflected in eight distinct, shorter “Reality Check” tracks. Serving as interludes or introductions, they feature pronounced Cinematic elements alongside an impressive array of sounds, effects, experiments, and the fragmented voice of French philosopher Albert Camus (best known for his novel “L’Étranger”).

The remaining ten tracks clearly form the core of the album—songs that reveal the true sound and essence of Mildreda, offering a continuation of the style fans may have encountered on earlier singles. Mildreda remains rooted in a dark, obscure, and at times tormented atmosphere, all cast within a Dark-Electro framework. Industrial elements play a significant role, particularly in the percussion. Jan Dewulf has truly outdone himself, offering listeners an unparalleled experience defined by both complexity and efficiency. Certain passages evoke the genius of Skinny Puppy, though without attempting to directly emulate the Canadian masters. It is evident that Dewulf is a versatile artist who has experimented—and continues to experiment—with a wide range of musical genres. At times, the sound leans towards EBM, as on the formidable “Silk Skin,” which recalls the menacing atmosphere of Front 242’s “Moldavia.” Some sequences sound slightly less dark, yet simply fit into the overall picture. Jan Dewulf’s menacing, distorted vocals complete the experience. Two standout tracks feature notable guest vocalists. There is the already familiar “Virtual Goddess” with Johan Van Roy (Suicide Commando), but even more striking is “Rückwärts” with Constantin ‘Breñal’ Warter (Calva Y Nada)—also a fantastic track.

Mildreda delivers an expansive, detailed, and polished album where atmosphere takes center stage without losing sight of its danceable side. I believe this record won’t need a reality check to convince anyone that it is a remarkable piece of work. (Rating:8½).

Listen to “End Of The Line”:

About Mildreda

Mildreda is a dark electro/EBM project from Ostend, Belgium, started in the early 1990s before splitting up. Jan Dewulf resurrected the project in 2009. Mildreda released the album “De Laffe Denker” in 1996, followed after the 2009 relaunch by “Coward Philosophy” (2016) and “Cowards” (2017). The albums “Fire” (2020), “Reinvention Of Pain”, “Liaisons Dangereuses” and “I Was Never Really There” followed in 2021, and “Blue-Devilled”, “Devil’s Gaze”, “Prophecies” and “Friendly Fire” in 2023.

“Realities” is released on Dependent and features guest vocals from Johan Van Roy of Suicide Commando on “Virtual Goddess” and Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada on “Rückwärts”.

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

With “Realities”, Jan Dewulf does something more interesting than simply broaden Mildreda‘s sound. He removes one of the most recognisable elements of “Blue-Devilled” altogether: there is not a single sacred sample on the new album. The quasi-liturgical weight of its predecessor gives way to colder electronics, sharper industrial abrasion and passages that move considerably closer to noise. At the same time, the writing becomes more exposed, allowing tenderness, ageing, regret, loneliness and vulnerability into Mildreda without translating any of them into softness.

Scheduled for release on August 28 through Dependent Records, “Realities” is an 18-track double album, also issued as a limited 2CD artbook with 48 pages designed by Henk Willems. Recurring “Reality Checks” run through its structure; Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada appears on “Rückwärts”, while Suicide Commando‘s Johan Van Roy joins “Virtual Goddess”. Where “Blue-Devilled” worked explicitly with Sartre, “Realities” turns towards Camus and Sisyphus: falling, rebuilding and the uncomfortable recognition that a life does not unfold inside one stable reality, but through successive versions of it.

In this conversation, that idea moves far beyond philosophy as an intellectual reference. Dewulf talks about reaching middle age and the lives no longer available to us, why the “Reality Checks” function like the seams in kintsugi, social media complicity, the strange persistence of gods after belief disappears, and why increased vulnerability pushed Mildreda towards more violent sound rather than away from it. The result is also a remarkably precise account of an artist who says he is no longer searching for Mildreda’s identity; he is now interested in finding out how far that identity can be stretched before it stops being Mildreda.

Mildreda interview

Karo: Jan, when we first spoke in 2021, you told me that maturity had finally allowed you to “come home” with Mildreda. I have followed the project ever since, through “I Was Never Really There”, “Blue-Devilled”, the concerts and now “Realities”, and this record gives me almost the opposite impression: you sound secure enough in Mildreda to start dismantling parts of the language you had established. How much did making “Realities” require you to question your own idea of what Mildreda is supposed to sound like?

Jan: You could argue that making music, playing in a band, writing lyrics and creating a story around it will always be a journey of exploration. But the nature of that journey has definitely changed. I’m no longer searching for Mildreda’s identity, and by now I feel I’ve figured out the DNA of the project as well. That foundation is there, and it’s solid. And precisely because of that, I can now embark on more adventurous quests: exploring the boundaries of the Mildreda sound, allowing for a broader emotional range, and seeing how far I can stretch things without losing what makes Mildreda what it is. I think that’s something you can clearly hear on “Realities”.

Karo: When you sent me the album, you described it as your most emotional work and said there were “more colours in the music than ever”. Having heard it, I think the interesting thing is that those colours are certainly not all softer ones. There is industrial abrasion, noise, harsher vocals, but also enormous electronic detail, space and moments of delicacy. When you speak about colour in music, what exactly does that mean to you? Is it timbre, emotional range, dynamics, harmonic language, or the freedom to allow contradictory emotional states to exist within the same musical vocabulary?

Jan: When I said it was my most emotional album, I also, and perhaps primarily, meant that on a lyrical level. I allowed myself to explore themes and emotions that are rather unusual within a genre like dark electro. I deliberately moved beyond the genre’s more traditional themes of pain, anger and darkness, making room for vulnerability and tenderness instead. That vulnerability sometimes finds its way into the music as well, in quieter, more emotional and delicate passages that are relatively new territory for Mildreda. But at the same time, I really pushed the boundaries in the opposite direction too, exploring noisier, harsher and more abrasive territory than before. So in that sense, those additional colours aren’t necessarily softer ones. It’s more about widening the entire emotional and sonic spectrum of what Mildreda can be.

Karo: The distance from “Blue-Devilled” is wide. That album had an almost architectural darkness, with quasi-sacral space, ritual weight and gothic grandeur, whereas “Realities” feels more corporeal, metallic and exposed. The church-like atmosphere has largely disappeared even though the philosophical conflict has not. Did the change in subject matter make that previous sonic language inappropriate, or had you simply reached the point where you no longer needed those symbols to create darkness?

Jan: Especially in Mildreda’s early days in the 1990s, that sacred element was an important part of the sound. I was heavily influenced by bands like Will, early Delerium and In Slaughter Natives, who incorporated bombastic samples of sacred chants into their dark electronic compositions. That whole wave of inspiration came back in full force while making “Blue-Devilled”, so much so that the album is packed with grandiose, sacral samples. One fan joked that if he took a shot of jenever every time he heard a monk singing on “Blue-Devilled”, he’d be completely drunk by the end of the album. He had a point: we may have overdone it a little. So with “Realities”, it was a very conscious decision not to use a single sacred sample anywhere on the album. This time, I wanted the darkness to come from a colder, more purely electronic sound.

Karo: “Blue-Devilled” entered into dialogue with Sartre, particularly his idea of hell in relation to the gaze and judgement of other people. “Realities” moves towards Camus, which changes the philosophical problem considerably: from the self confronted by another consciousness towards the collision between our need for meaning and a world that does not promise to provide it. Why did Camus become relevant to you now, and was that movement philosophical first or biographical first?

Jan: At its heart, “Realities” is about falling down and finding the strength to get back up again. Throughout our lives, we keep having to rediscover and rebuild ourselves after setbacks, whether they are small or life-changing. And we have to do all of that within the brief interlude we are granted in this universe: our finite lives. That is where Camus entered the picture. In many ways, “Realities” became a confrontation with the absurd. Echoing Camus and his comparison of the human condition to the fate of Sisyphus, the album revolves around that endless cycle of falling and rising, breaking and rebuilding, and forcing ourselves to create new versions of reality. We search for meaning even though the universe offers us no guarantee that there is any to be found. And yet we keep moving. That is also exactly what the title “Realities” refers to. We don’t live in one single, fixed reality, but in a succession of realities. With every setback, every decision and every new beginning, we become a slightly different version of ourselves and inhabit a slightly different world.

Visually, that journey is beautifully reflected in Henk Willems’ artwork, where nature slowly reclaims what was once broken. Moss spreads across abandoned ruins, while new growth gradually softens the scars of destruction. To me, it became a powerful metaphor for the album itself: not simply a story of collapse, but of renewal. Not of defeat, but of return.

Karo: Camus famously concludes “The Myth of Sisyphus” with “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”, but your Sisyphus in “End of the Line” carries something rather more specific: biography. “Forty-five, fifty-five / This is the time of your life”, followed by those “thousand lives you never led”, introduces age, memory and unrealised possibility into the cycle. Returning to the beginning at fifty cannot mean returning to the same beginning as at twenty because the person pushing the rock has accumulated knowledge, losses and consequences. Does your Sisyphus still arrive at something resembling Camus’s freedom through lucidity, or are you questioning whether accepting the absurd is enough once time itself has become part of the burden?

Jan: The initial spark was actually something very personal. Not that long ago, when I turned 45, someone told me, “You’re about to enter the ten best years of your life.” Whether that’s true or not is impossible to say, of course, but there was something strangely powerful about that thought. It almost felt like an obligation to make those years count. That naturally led me back to questions that have always fascinated me: the fact that life is finite, that our time is limited, and that with age comes an increasing awareness of all the lives we could have lived but didn’t. At twenty, there still seems to be an almost infinite number of possible futures ahead of you. Later in life, some of those possibilities have inevitably disappeared. Choices have been made, things have been lost, and time itself becomes part of the weight you carry. That is where Camus and Sisyphus became particularly relevant to “End of the Line”. Sisyphus keeps pushing his boulder despite knowing that it will inevitably roll back down. To me, that endless cycle of falling, getting back up and starting again is a very powerful metaphor for life. We all have our own rock to push uphill, and somehow we keep going. So can Sisyphus still be happy while carrying that rock up the mountain again and again? I think, with Camus, that he can. Despite our mortality and the intrinsic meaninglessness of existence, we still have the freedom to create our own stories, to find joy and to give meaning to the limited time we have. Perhaps age doesn’t contradict Camus’s idea of freedom at all; it simply makes it more urgent. We’d better start pushing, living and creating meaning now, because at some point, the time really does run out.

Karo: Musically, I hear more industrial language on “Realities” than on any previous Mildreda album, sometimes moving into very raw, almost noise-like territory. “Rückwärts” is particularly severe and fragmented, but that hardness runs through much of the record in the percussion, distortion, chopped structures and increasingly sharp vocal attack. What led you towards these harsher materials? Did you consciously pursue abrasion as part of the production language, and were there moments when you had to resist making a sound cleaner because its discomfort was exactly what the song required?

Jan: That direction actually emerged quite naturally. But it is true that, with this album, I consciously wanted the music to be less immediately digestible than on the previous record. Musically, “Realities” has far more sharp edges, rough textures and moments of genuine abrasion. Perhaps I had been a little too cautious before, whereas this time I allowed myself to go all the way.

There is a certain duality at the heart of the album in that respect: very harsh, abrasive music intertwined with vulnerability in the lyrics and themes. That contrast has always fascinated me. Nine Inch Nails taught me that industrial music can be layered with vulnerability without losing any of its power or aggression. If anything, the two can reinforce each other.

Karo: At the same time, reducing “Realities” to its aggression would completely misrepresent it because this is also an extraordinarily elaborate electronic record. Across the album, sounds accumulate, separate, change depth and move around one another; dense structures can suddenly open and allow a small sample, voice or electronic detail to occupy an enormous amount of psychological space. How differently were you thinking about density, depth and layering this time, and how do you know when complexity is intensifying an emotion rather than beginning to hide it?

Jan: First of all, thank you for describing our music so beautifully. I’m genuinely happy that I was able to take you along on that musical journey in that way. For me, every track is a new search for the right sound and the right balance. And I love that process. I find it incredibly rewarding to spend hours in the studio working with synths and samples, tweaking sounds and layers until they evoke exactly the feeling I’m looking for. There’s something wonderful about that moment when, after endless tweaking, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall into place. This time, there simply seemed to be more puzzle pieces than ever, all demanding their own space. That’s one of the reasons why “Realities” ultimately needed to become a double album. I secretly hope that listeners will surrender to that journey from beginning to end: eighteen tracks moving through very different moods, textures and sonic landscapes. For me, the complexity only works when all those layers ultimately serve that journey and the emotion behind it.

Karo: The “Reality Checks” are one of the strongest compositional ideas on the album. I do not hear them as conventional interludes because they do not merely separate the larger songs or give us recovery time. They make the whole record feel interwoven, almost braided: the substantial compositions form one strand, these smaller pieces enter between them, and gradually the relationship between the two becomes part of the album’s architecture. When did you realise that “Realities” needed this structure, and what makes an idea a “Reality Check” rather than something that develops into a full Mildreda song?

Jan: The idea of using interludes was there from the very beginning. I wanted something that would weave the individual songs together and make the album feel like one continuous journey rather than simply a collection of tracks. Albums like “Entities” by Project Pitchfork and “Galleries of Pain” by Placebo Effect were important references in that respect. Gradually, those interludes developed a character of their own and became the “Reality Checks”. I started to see them almost as the golden seams in kintsugi: they sit between the larger pieces, but rather than simply separating them, they bind the fractured parts into a new whole. Some echo or distort elements from the songs around them, some contain vocals, while others became little sonic adventures of their own. And perhaps that is what distinguishes a “Reality Check” from a full Mildreda song. It doesn’t need to arrive anywhere or tell a complete story. It can remain fragmentary: suggest something, disturb the balance for a moment and then disappear. Its incompleteness is part of its purpose.

Karo: Their placement also gives the album something almost physiological, like a heartbeat. Pressure accumulates, then comes a caesura, a moment of recalibration, and movement resumes. Yet the “Reality Checks” are not predictable moments of relief; sometimes they open the music and allow it to breathe, while elsewhere they make the footing even less secure. In ordinary life, a reality check is exactly such a moment: the narrative we have been living inside is interrupted and we are forced to take stock of where we actually stand. Afterwards the external circumstances may be identical, but our perception of them has changed. Is that also what these pieces are doing, repeatedly altering the position from which we perceive the music around them, and perhaps offering another way of understanding the plural title “Realities”?

Jan: Yes, very much so. I like your description of them as moments of recalibration, because that is exactly how I see a reality check in life as well. Something happens that briefly disrupts the story you have been telling yourself. The world may still be exactly the same afterwards, but your position within it has shifted. That connects directly to the central idea of “Realities”. We fall, we rise, we rebuild ourselves, and each time we do, we are forced into a slightly different version of reality. There is no single fixed perspective from which we experience our lives. Our perception constantly changes through loss, experience, decisions and new beginnings. “Reality Checks” translate that idea into the architecture of the album. They interrupt the flow and slightly reposition the listener before the next piece begins. And importantly, as you point out, they are not always moments of relief. Sometimes a reality check brings clarity; sometimes it only makes things more confusing. But either way, something has shifted. You continue the journey from a different position than before. And yes, in that sense they are very closely connected to the plural in “Realities”: there is never just one reality to return to.

Karo: You told me that the material grew into a double album, yet for you it still tells one story. That is a difficult structural problem: eighteen pieces, radically different degrees of intensity and a very broad electronic vocabulary could easily become abundance without coherence. At what point did you understand that you were not making two albums, or an album with supplementary pieces? What makes “Realities” one work for you: narrative, emotional continuity, musical recurrence, or something that only exists through the sequence itself?

Jan: There was also a very practical starting point. New albums on Dependent are nowadays released as beautiful, exclusive hardcover artbooks with two CDs. I’m a big fan of that format, but I’m not necessarily a big fan of the idea that the second disc automatically has to become a collection of bonus material. I didn’t feel like inviting a dozen remixers for this one. This had to remain my story. So in a way, I was quite happy to discover that I simply had too much to say for a single CD. There were so many musical ideas, moods and little sonic adventures that all felt integral to the same universe. Cutting them down just to fit the conventional length of an album would have felt more artificial than allowing the record to expand. And there was a reassuring precedent, of course. Nine Inch Nails showed with “The Fragile” that a double album can be an extraordinary work in its own right rather than an album plus an appendix. That record gave me confidence that abundance doesn’t necessarily have to come at the expense of coherence. For me, “Realities” is ultimately one big story. Despite the range of sounds, moods and emotions, everything belongs to the same conceptual journey: falling, rebuilding, shifting perspective and entering another reality. The “Reality Checks” help bind that journey together, but ultimately I think the coherence exists in the sequence itself. I hope the listener experiences those eighteen pieces not as separate destinations, but as chapters in one long journey through constantly changing emotional and sonic landscapes.

Karo: In our first interview you described songwriting as a way of exorcising your demons. “Realities”, however, seems less protected by symbolic architecture than some of the earlier material. “Damage Done”, “Clair-Obscur” and “End of the Line” allow loneliness, emotional asymmetry, ageing, regret and exhaustion to remain recognisably human rather than disguising them completely as theology or elaborate metaphor. Has becoming more personal also changed your relationship with abstraction? At what point does transforming an experience protect the song, and at what point does it protect the writer too much?

Jan: That is something that happened quite naturally and evolved over time. Initially, Your Life On Hold was the project where I allowed myself to reveal more of my soul and dig deeper into personal emotions, while Mildreda was primarily the place where I wanted to be loud, confrontational and channel aggression. But gradually, while writing new material, I found myself digging deeper with Mildreda as well. I started allowing a much broader emotional range into the project and became less dependent on abstraction or metaphor to express what I wanted to say. I think that also has a lot to do with becoming more confident as a songwriter. I no longer feel the need to hide behind anything. If there is something I want to say, I can say it openly and without disguise. And what changed with “Realities” is that I discovered I can do that within Mildreda too, without compromising what Mildreda is.

Karo: You mentioned Nine Inch Nails to me while explaining the direction of this record, particularly the possibility of allowing vulnerability and emotional depth to coexist with intensity and noise. On “Realities”, vulnerability rarely means making the music gentler; quite often exposure seems to make it more violent. Did that become a compositional principle in itself, that tenderness, humiliation, rage, longing and industrial aggression do not need separate musical languages because they can actually originate from the same emotional state?

Jan: What is vulnerable, fragile and delicate is also more susceptible to pain, and I think you can hear that throughout the album. There is a lot of sadness, underlying pain and unanswered longing on “Realities”. Those emotions don’t necessarily ask for gentle music. Sometimes vulnerability can be extremely violent precisely because there is so little protection around it. The best way for me to translate that duality into music was therefore sometimes to work with very dissonant, abrasive and explosive sounds. Tenderness and aggression don’t have to be opposites; they can grow out of exactly the same emotional state. That constant interplay between light and shadow runs through the entire album, I think. The fragile moments make the harsh ones more painful, and the harshness in turn makes the vulnerability feel even more exposed.

Karo: The collaborators introduce another interesting contradiction. In 2023 you told me that with “Blue-Devilled” you deliberately wanted to undertake the creative process yourself, partly because after previous collaborations you needed to demonstrate that you could stand alone artistically. “Realities”, which you consider much more personal, opens the door again: Constantin Warter of Calva Y Nada enters “Rückwärts”, while Johan Van Roy of Suicide Commando appears on “Virtual Goddess”. Why did the more personal album become the right place for other voices again, and how much of their own identity do you want a guest to bring into a Mildreda song?

Jan: That’s true: on “Blue-Devilled” I deliberately avoided collaborations for exactly the reason you mention. But that was an artistic decision rather than something dictated by the subject matter. I needed to prove to myself that I could carry an entire Mildreda album on my own. Once I had done that, there was no reason to keep that door closed. This time I wanted other voices on the record, and I’m incredibly happy with the people I managed to bring in.

The collaboration with Calva Y Nada was actually a blessing on a very practical level as well. “Rückwärts” was one of the first songs I wrote for the album, but after living with the demo for a while, I realised I was completely stuck. I loved the track, but I simply couldn’t imagine my own voice doing it justice. Constantin has such a unique and unmistakable voice that once I started fantasising about someone else singing it, I simply couldn’t hear anyone but him. Through mutual friends we got in touch, eventually met in person, and to my delight he connected with the idea. For me, it was a genuine full-circle moment. Calva Y Nada was one of the bands that defined my teenage years, so hearing Constantin’s voice on a Mildreda record still feels both surreal and deeply meaningful.

Johan Van Roy represents something very similar to me. Together with Dirk Ivens, he helped shape what dark electro sounded like in Belgium. With “Realities”, I deliberately wanted to reconnect with that cold, uncompromising Belgian industrial DNA, and “Virtual Goddess” immediately felt like the perfect track for Johan. He brought exactly the intensity and attitude I had hoped for. And I think that also answers the question of how much of themselves I want guests to bring. I don’t invite someone simply to perform a part that could just as easily have been sung by me. I want their identity to become part of the song. Constantin and Johan are unmistakably themselves on these tracks, while somehow still sounding completely at home within Mildreda.

Having them both on “Realities” is a real privilege. They are far more than guest vocalists to me: they are two artists whose music helped shape my own musical identity long before Mildreda even existed.

Karo: The remixes take that question of identity even further. Das Ich and Steril reconstruct “End of the Line”, while Flesh Field rework “Virtual Goddess”, and around a record called “Realities” the very act of remixing becomes conceptually appropriate: the same composition receives another body, another emphasis and another emotional temperature while remaining recognisable. Did any of those versions make you discover something in your own original that you had not consciously put there? More fundamentally, where does the identity of a song reside if rhythm, texture, atmosphere and structure can change so dramatically while we still perceive it as the same work?

Jan: I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with remixes. I love them when they have a genuine reason to exist, rather than simply being part of some endless process of squeezing more material out of a release. The occasion has to feel right, and so does the remixer. That’s why I’m quite selective about both. Mildreda hasn’t actually been through the remix machine that often, so having several artists reinterpret these songs was relatively new territory for Mildreda, and quite exciting.

Das Ich were genuine heroes of my youth. Their first two albums still give me goosebumps today, and remarkably, they haven’t aged at all. They were simply light-years ahead of their time. Having Bruno remix one of my songs was therefore a childhood dream coming true. And when I first heard the result, I actually did a little dance of joy. It sounds unmistakably like Das Ich, yet “End of the Line” is still clearly there. In a strange way, it feels like a true hybrid: half my song, half a Das Ich composition. Perhaps that is also an answer to your question about where the identity of a song resides. Apparently you can change an enormous amount and still preserve some kind of core that remains recognisable.

I’m equally happy with the other remixes. Steril are heroes of mine as well, and they transformed “End of the Line” into a wonderfully tight club track. Flesh Field, on the other hand, happened to cross my path at exactly the right moment, so involving him was almost an act of serendipity. I loved hearing “Virtual Goddess” thrown into his wonderfully mad industrial mixture of bombast, aggression and even a touch of dubstep. What fascinates me about all three is that I can still recognise my songs, but I’m hearing them through someone else’s ears. Maybe that’s what a good remix should do: not simply decorate the original, but reveal another possible reality that was somehow already hiding inside it. The Das Ich and Steril versions of “End of the Line” were released on the June 2026 EP, while the “Virtual Goddess” release includes the Flesh Field remix.

Karo: “Virtual Goddess” avoids one of the easiest traps in writing about digital culture because the narrator is implicated in the mechanism he criticises. There is a virtual goddess, but there is also a virtual god; desire becomes entangled with images, attention, views and projection, so nobody gets to occupy the comfortable position outside the system. Is complicity important here? Have we reached a point where criticising mediated reality while continuing to produce, consume and emotionally invest in it is itself one of the defining contradictions of contemporary life?

Jan: This is a difficult question because there are several things tangled up in it. There is the sheer amount of our day that social media consumes, but also the way it affects how we present ourselves and how we perceive other people. Both images are inevitably distorted. At the same time, however critical I am of social media, I can’t dismiss it as purely negative. It remains, whether we like it or not, an important way of discovering music and news, staying connected and sharing your own story with the world. And occasionally you even find a good joke there. So yes, complicity is absolutely part of it. I notice the contradiction in myself all the time. I can hardly keep away from my smartphone, call it an addiction if you like, while simultaneously being deeply irritated by the whole mechanism. I’m frustrated by all those pixel-perfect façades, yet at the same time I participate in creating one myself. I criticise the game while continuing to play it. And artificial intelligence is adding yet another layer of complexity to all of this. The boundaries between what is real, constructed, enhanced or entirely artificial are becoming increasingly difficult to define. We seem to be living inside a fascinating and slightly disturbing science-fiction film, except that none of us gets to sit outside it and simply watch.

Karo: “Götterfall” almost feels like an older Mildreda argument surviving inside an entirely different philosophical environment. We have discussed your atheism before, and the quasi-sacral architecture of “Blue-Devilled” has largely vanished, yet somebody is still firing at gods who remain silent, mocking and apparently impossible to kill. If those gods are no longer theological, what has taken their place? Are there ideas, institutions, authorities, memories or even people we consciously stop believing in while continuing to grant them enormous psychological power?

Jan: The ancient Greek historian Herodotus tells us that the Getae would shoot arrows into the sky during thunderstorms, threatening their god. I’ve always found that an incredibly powerful image, and I had actually used it before in a Your Life On Hold song. But it was simply too strong not to bring into the Mildreda universe as well: man, confronted with a reality he cannot accept, firing his arrows at the heavens. I also knew I wanted a song in German on the album, which allowed me to reshape the idea into something new. The arrows became bullets, and German inevitably gives the whole thing a very different weight and character. But the central idea remained the same: we are powerless and insignificant, raging against forces that are infinitely larger than ourselves.

Karo: “Reality” widens the scope dramatically at the end: headlines, war, mediated violence, environmental destruction, the repeated consumption of catastrophe through screens. Much of the album has dealt with extremely intimate realities such as desire, damage, loneliness, ageing and unrealised possibilities, and then the individual is placed inside this enormous informational environment. Is the movement outward suggesting that there is ultimately no purely private reality, because even our most intimate emotional lives are continuously penetrated and reorganised by images, narratives and catastrophes arriving from outside?

Jan: Despite what the title might suggest, this closing track is something of an outsider on the album in terms of content indeed. Where the rest of the album navigates my inner landscape, this song shifts its gaze to the world around me, our planet, and it isn’t doing well. Long-time fans who were with us back in the cassette days may recognise this piece. I wrote the first demo thirty years ago. I had always intended to give it a definitive version someday, and this album finally made that possible: new lyrics, new sound and a long-awaited rebirth.

Karo: Finally, you already have concerts around the new-album period, including NCN in Deutzen on September 6 and Fourscher Festival in Erfurt in November. What happens after those dates? Are further Mildreda concerts already being discussed, and is the ambition eventually to take “Realities” on a more extensive tour of its own?

Jan: I definitely hope to play a lot of shows with Mildreda in 2027. A few things have already been confirmed, but there’s still a lot up in the air. If the stars align, it could turn into quite an adventurous year!

About Mildreda

Mildreda is the Belgian dark-electro project led by producer, vocalist and songwriter Jan Dewulf. Its roots go back to the mid-1990s, when Dewulf, still in his teens and strongly affected by the cold Belgian electronics of acts such as The Klinik, began working with synthesizers and home-recording equipment. His self-released cassette “II Castrato” appeared in 1995, followed by “De Laffe Denker” in 1996. The latter circulated widely through the electro underground, and Mildreda subsequently shared stages with acts including Plastic Noise Experience, Terminal Choice, Covenant and VNV Nation.

Dewulf later put Mildreda on hold and concentrated on Diskonnekted, while also completing a degree in philosophy. He returned to Mildreda with the digitally released “Coward Philosophy” in 2016. After signing with Dependent Records, the project released “I Was Never Really There” in 2021, bringing the early Belgian dark-electro foundations into a substantially more detailed contemporary production environment. Guests on that record included Dirk Ivens, Cyan of The Eternal Afflict and Numb’s Don Gordon, while Claus Larsen of Leaether Strip handled mastering.

The concept album “Blue-Devilled” followed in December 2023. Built partly around Jean-Paul Sartre’s treatment of hell and the judgement of others, it expanded Mildreda’s melodic and atmospheric vocabulary while retaining its Belgian and Canadian dark-electro foundations.

“Realities”, released on August 28, 2026 through Dependent, contains 18 tracks across two discs and is available as a limited 48-page hardcover artbook designed by Henk Willems. The album features Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada on “Rückwärts” and Johan Van Roy of Suicide Commando on “Virtual Goddess”. Its conceptual grounding shifts from Sartre towards Camus, while recurring “Reality Checks” connect the individual compositions into one continuous album structure. Mildreda’s official biography describes the project as led by Dewulf; the live incarnation consists of Jan Dewulf and Christophe “Salva” Salvatore. The single “Silk Skin” preceded the album in August 2026.

Interview by Karo Kratochwil.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Belgian dark electro project Mildreda released a lyric video for “Silk Skin” on August 6, 2026, the latest advance single from the double album “Realities”, due August 28, 2026 on Dependent Records. “Silk Skin” opens the second disc of the release and follows earlier singles “End of the Line” and “Virtual Goddess”, the latter featuring Suicide Commando’s Johan Van Roy.

‘Silk Skin’: theme and production

Mildreda mastermind Jan Dewulf wrote and produced “Silk Skin” around the tension between longing and retreat. “This track revolves around unspoken desires and the familiar, exhausting push and pull between longing and retreat,” Dewulf said. “I wanted to transform that tension into a ritual – a feverish invocation, a dance that binds, summons, and slowly pulls you under. Musically, the heavy bass was a happy accident in the studio, one that instantly revealed the direction that I needed to take. A relentless pulse rooted in EBM, and unmistakably Belgian at its sonic core.”

Dewulf recorded, produced and mixed “Silk Skin” at Cyberflesh Loft in Ostend, with mastering by Pieter De Wagter at Equus in Vlezenbeek. The single has been cleared for immediate radio broadcast, and cover art and layout for “Realities” are by Henk Willems.

About Mildreda

Mildreda is the dark electro project of Belgian musician Jan Dewulf, who also records as Diskonnekted. Dewulf began Mildreda in the mid-1990s, drawn to the electronic body music of Belgian acts such as The Klinik, before setting the project aside to found Diskonnekted. He revived Mildreda in the 2010s, signing to Dependent Records and releasing “I Was Never Really There” in 2021 and the concept album “Blue-Devilled” in 2023. Christophe Salvatore plays live keyboards in the current line-up. The double album “Realities” follows “Blue-Devilled” as an 18-track, two-CD release on Dependent Records, featuring guest vocals from Suicide Commando‘s Johan Van Roy on “Virtual Goddess” and Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada on “Rückwärts”. “Silk Skin” is the album’s latest preview ahead of its August 28, 2026 release.

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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Belgian dark electro project Mildreda, the work of Jan Dewulf, release the single “Virtual Goddess” on July 1, 2026 via Dependent. Written and produced by Dewulf, the Mildreda “Virtual Goddess” single features guest vocals by Johan Van Roy of Suicide Commando, and is the second preview of Mildreda’s double album “Realities”, set for August 28, 2026.

The track pairs Dewulf’s hard electronics with Van Roy’s vocals, and arrives during Suicide Commando’s 40th anniversary year. Van Roy founded Suicide Commando in 1986, and the project remains one of the defining names in electro-industrial and EBM four decades on.

Mildreda and Suicide Commando on ‘Virtual Goddess’

“Virtual Goddess” is track 16 on “Realities”, an 18-track double album issued by Dependent on CD and in digital form. The record follows the 2026 single “End of the Line” and also carries a guest turn from Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada on “Rückwärts”. Dewulf, who holds a degree in philosophy, centres the album on the question of reality: where the 2023 album “Blue-Devilled” drew on Jean-Paul Sartre, “Realities” turns to Albert Camus.

Van Roy and Dewulf are long-standing names in Belgian dark electronics, and “Virtual Goddess” places the two side by side for the first time on a Mildreda release. The single is available digitally; the parent album can be ordered through Dependent and Bandcamp.

About Mildreda

Mildreda is the dark electro project of Belgian musician Jan Dewulf, who also records as Diskonnekted. Dewulf started the project in the 1990s as an early outlet for hard, melodic electronics before setting it aside, then revived the name in the 2010s through German label Dependent. The project pairs cold, club-oriented EBM rhythms with melody and atmosphere.

Recent releases include the 2023 album “Blue-Devilled”, issued with the video “Devil’s Gaze”. The double album “Realities” continues that run and brings in guest vocalists from across the scene, among them Suicide Commando’s Johan Van Roy.

Suicide Commando, the long-running project of Johan Van Roy, marks 40 years in 2026; Side-Line recently covered the anniversary collection “Collective Suicide”. “Virtual Goddess” connects the two Belgian acts on the road to the August album.

Britta Pirkko

For almost 15 years I’ve been writing about music, interviewing artists and reviewing releases for Peek-A-Boo Magazine. Recently, I also launched my own WordPress website, where I continue to share interviews, reviews and news from the underground scene. The darker side of music has been part of my life for more than 30 years, with a passion for everything from ’80s synthpop and New Wave to EBM, Futurepop and dark electronic music in general. Also Metal and Rock is part of my world. Away from the scene, I work in a public library, where books are part of my everyday life. I enjoy both fiction and non-fiction, especially books on politics, religion, health and travel. I’m also a fan of thrillers and horror films. When I’m not listening to music or reading, you’ll usually find me exploring nature, enjoying a good sauna, experimenting with vegan cooking, or travelling to my second home, Finland. I’ve always believed the underground has the best stories. My job is simply to help tell them

(Picture via Darkvolt) Belgian Antwerp-based dark electro artist Darkvolt has a new album out, “Songs for Halloween” through DressCode Black, a sub-label of Detroit-Berlin. Musically this release offers eerie soundscapes and industrial beats and is available both digitally and physically on CD, just in time for the Halloween season.

The album features eight tracks including collaborations with other artists in the dark electro and industrial scene. Among the album’s featured artists are:

• Marieke Lightband (Psy’Aviah) on “The Skeleton King”.
• Axel Machens (Placebo Effect) on “Trick or Treat”.
• Jan Dewulf (Mildreda) on “The Curse”.
• Vain Sacrosanct (CauseNation) on “Candyman”.
• Chesko Geert Vandekerkhof (Der Klinke) on “Midnight Stalker”.
• Peter V. (Pro Patria) on “The Mask”.

“Songs for Halloween” is available for streaming on Spotify, Bandcamp, and other platforms, with physical CDs available for purchase through DressCode Black’s official channels.

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-based industrial band To Avoid recently released the single “Diatribe” and the “1989” EP ahead of their album “All Gods Are Gone”, out December 6, via Alfa Matrix. We now have more details on that new album.

“All Gods Are Gone” will be out as a double-CD digipak. While the first CD holds 13 tracks, the bonus CD features remixes by a rather impressive lineup, including Haujobb, Portion Control, Mildreda, Circumpolar, Kifoth, Sleepwalk, Severe Illusion, Ice Ages, Forgotten Sunrise, Object, Kalt, Gettner, Tension Control and Chrome Corps.

Thematically the album tackles dark themes such as crime, corruption, and environmental destruction.

You can pre-order the album via Bandcamp or order it on CD via the Alfa Matrix webstore.

Formed in 1998, To Avoid gained early recognition with their debut “Resurrection” (2002), followed by the albums “Passion and Pain” (2009) and recent singles such as “1989”. The new album continues their legacy of hard-hitting sound and thematic intensity, further solidifying their place in the global industrial music scene. Known for pushing the boundaries of dark electro since 2000, the band fuses late ’80s EBM with ’90s melodic dark electro, creating intense soundscapes. Read the review of ‘All Gods Are Gone’.

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

Referring to the events that unfolded globally, 2023 has again been a bloody, terrible year. Music continues to be a true therapy for soothing pain and suffering, though it seems to have a diminishing impact on the ongoing horror. Therefore, I’m once again wrapping up the year with a personal selection of my very own ‘best of’ albums.

Throughout the year, over 700 productions were selected, and 450 reviews were conducted. Some productions were declined because the style of music didn’t fit, others weren’t reviewed for not being ‘good enough’, while a final portion of reviews will be postponed to early 2024. I am immensely grateful to all the labels, bands, and promoters for considering my work, and I look forward to collaborating again in 2024.

I extend my deepest gratitude and thanks to Rich Bova (NEIKKA RPM), who has been reading, correcting, and improving the reviews for many years. Without Rich, these reviews would not exist. I also want to thank Bernard Van Isacker, chief editor of Side-Line Music Magazine, for our ongoing, successful collaboration. Last but not least, I thank my lovely wife, Katja, for giving me the time and freedom to pursue my passion.

However…

Looking ahead to 2024, I’ve been scaling back my activities for a few years and plan to reduce them further. Having started with my first reviews and interviews back in 1991, I feel the end drawing near. My aim is to reach 2025, but nothing is certain. I’ve grown a bit tired and disillusioned with how things are evolving.

That’s why I want to express a big ‘F*** you’ to so-called ‘artists’ and label owners who fail to realize or appreciate the work I do in creating reviews and preparing interviews to spotlight them. Guys, I do this for free and in my free time! The attitude and lack of respect shown by some – fortunately a very few – is very, very sad. But, I’m afraid it reflects the world we live in. Behind a genius artist doesn’t always stand a great person. It’s odd realizing that the ‘biggest’ and long-established artists in this scene are often the most accessible.

Writing reviews remains highly subjective and a source of discussion. Remember, it’s always the reviewer’s perception. I assure you, I always strive to substantiate my reviews as best as possible. A review is subjective but must be honest!

Like every year, I’ve selected the best albums of the year 2023. This ‘TOP 25’ encompasses various styles like EBM, Dark-Electro, IDM, Synth-Pop, Ethereal, Dark-Ambient, Industrial, Ritual, Cinematic, Gothic, Post-Punk, Cold/Dark-Wave, Dark-Techno, and a few related genres. It’s always an exciting yet challenging task.

This ‘TOP 25’ is based on the promotional material I received, excluding compilations, ‘best of’ productions, EPs, and singles. So, here’s my ‘TOP 25’ from 2023, and don’t forget to share it with your friends…

Stéphane Froidcoeur (for Inferno Sound Diaries/Side-Line Reviews)

Top 25 albums of the year 2023

1. CERULEAN VEINS “Black” Cold Transmission Music
2. LIEBKNECHT “Fabrikat” Ant-Zen
3. FRONTIER GUARDS “Colony” Aliens Production
4. SOPOR AETERNUS & THE ENSEMBLE OF SHADOWS “Alone At Sam’s – An Evening With…” Apocalyptic Vision / Trisol
5. WAVESHARD “Waveshard” Corvus Records
6. THE EMPATH “Black Hole” Audiophob
7. VNV NATION “Electric Sun” Metropolis Records
8. EFF DST “Incarnate” Ant-Zen
9. ENZO KREFT “XL” Enzo Kreft
10. DELEYAMAN “The Sudbury Inn” TTO Records
11. GIRLS UNDER GLASS “Backdraft” Dependent Records
12. ALIEN VAMPIRES “Return Me To Hell” Alfa Matrix
13. SUN’S SPECTRUM “The Silence After The Fall” Cold Transmission Music
14. DANIEL MYER “Hingab” Sonic Groove
15. SHROUDS “Shrouds” Hands
16. DIARY OF DREAMS “Melancholin” Accession Records
17. MONO INC “Ravenblack” NoCut / SPV
18. ROME “Gates Of Europe” Trisol
19. OHNE NOMEN “The S-Witch” Cold Transmission Music
20. THE SEVEN WHORES OF THE APOCALYPSE “All Through The Waste” Scanner / Dark Dimensions
21. SPANKTHENUN “The Bunker Tapes Vol.3” SpankTheNun
22. BLACKCARBURNING “Watching Sleepers” COP International
23. GOD BODY DISCONNECT “The Weight Of Regression” Cryo Chamber
24. MILDREDA “Blue-Devilled” Dependent Records
25. PASCAL SAVY “Simulacra” Cyclic Law

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

Celebrating its 30th year, Audioglobe, the most important distributor in the darkwave scene, just shared a statistical review, revealing the shifts and trends in the darkwave (and related) music genre.

Our readers will surely remember that we have reported on these stats for years, until 2018, the first year that Audioglobe didn’t communicate these stats. Sebastian Koch from Audioglobe explains: “Some customers never really cared that much about these, as they have better things to do than reading boring mails from the undersigned. But… Surprisingly there are quite a high number of customers, that sort of ‘complained’ about the fact, that no stats were being done any longer… The reason is: I was simply always far too busy in past years. Anyway: Here we go with the first new stats since 2017!”

So here are some export facts.

Top 10 Bestselling Labels of 2023 (export)

1. FABRIKA/DEAD SCARLET
   • She Past Away, Lebanon Hanover, Selofan, Kaelan Mikla, M!R!M, Doric…
2. METROPOLIS
   • Birthday Massacre, Delerium, Front Line Assembly, A Projection, KMFDM, Legendary P.D…
3. ICY COLD/MANIC DEPR.
   • Twin Tribes, Je T’aime, Traitrs, Kill Shelter, Closed Mouth, Talk to Her, Schonwald…
4. ALFA MATRIX
   • Alien Vampires, Front 242, Metroland, Die Robo Sapiens, Elm, 808 Dot Pop, Helalyn Flowers…
5. RUSTBLADE
   • Claudio Simonetti, Ennio Morricone, Lycia Lunch, Spiritual Front, Ketvector, Legendary Pink D…
6. OUT OF LINE
   • Blutengel, Hocico, Solitary Experiments, Suicide Commando, Signal Aout42, Erdling…
7. TRISOL
   • Sopor Aeternus, Rome, Clan of Xymox, Asp, Ostara, Skinflicks, Nachtmahr, Mantus, Soman…
8. DEPENDENT
   • Kirlian Camera, Girls Under Glass, Spectra*Paris, Mildreda, Black Nail Cabaret, Beborn Beton…
9. ARTOFFACT
   • Actors, Noise Unit, cEvin Key, Kaelan Mikla, Ploho, Sacred Skin, Kauan, Ken Mode, Spectres…
10. AUERBACH
    • Spiritual Front, Sol Invictus, Tenhi, Moon and the Night Spirit, Haavard, Hekate, Orplid…

Best Export Territories of 2023

If we look at the Audioglobe stats, we notice that Germany and Greece remain the company’s strongest markets, continuing a trend that has been consistent for ages. However, the 2023 statistics reveal some notable shifts.

Canada, once a prominent market for Audioglobe, has surprisingly disappeared from the export landscape. In contrast, the United States and the United Kingdom have re-emerged as significant territories, marking their return to prominence in the darkwave music scene after several years.

The most unexpected development in 2023 is the rise of Australia as a key market. This growth stands in stark contrast to Switzerland, which, despite its affluence, has seen a sharp decline in sales. Sebastian Koch adds: “The (by far!) lowest sales of all countries where we export to, was to Switzerland… The rich Swiss don’t buy records! Since I left the country (1990), something is wrong back home!”

Here is the top 10 list of export territories:

1. Germany
2. Greece
3. Netherlands
4. Portugal
5. USA
6. United Kingdom
7. Australia
8. Spain
9. Russia
10. Poland

Not in the top 10, but France, Japan, Malta, Brazil, Sweden, Mexico, and Perù are also good export territories for Audioglobe.

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: Dark-Electro.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Jan Dewulf (Diskonnekted, Your Life On Hold, Mildred In Oblivion ao) strikes back with his Dark-Electro project Mildreda. Two years after the praised album “I Was Never Really There” Jan unleashed twelve new songs inspired by the concept of ‘hell’.

Content: Diskonnekted moves on composing Dark-Electronics in the line of previous albums “Coward Philosophy” (2016) and “I Was Never Really There” (2021). The production is recovered with dense, overwhelming, darkness boosted by Epic arrangements and refined with cool string parts. More than ever before Mildreda sounds as the imaginary offspring between Yelworc, The Retrosic and In Slaughter Natives. This work sounds even more ‘atmospheric’ which has been reinforced by multiple fragments featuring Gregorian- and other chants. It’s a slow, bombastic composition featuring Jan’s tenebrous vocals on top.

+ + + : Mildreda confirms the potential of previous albums. Jan Dewulf reactivated Mildreda in 2009 and since then never stopped taking listeners by surprise. I can’t say he’s really innovating but he achieved an original and creative production mixing typical Dark-Electro atmospheres together with heavy, bombastic, Epic, arrangements and Industrial noises. The power of the production lies in the tormented atmosphere which in a way perfectly symbolizes the concept of hell. The work however features a few more dancefloor-driven cuts like “Friendly Fire”, “Prophecies” and “A Dog From Hell”. Production wise I also consider this album as the best Mildreda-work in history. There’s a true chemistry between all different influences, the chants and Jan’s own voice.

– – – : This is not the ultimate album for dance floors although there are some club stompers featured.

Conclusion: There are probably not enough bands dealing with a similar approach of Dark-Electro as Mildreda. That makes precisely the originality and strength of the project.

Best songs: “Prophecies”, “A Dog From Hell”, “Friendly Fire”, “Damaged Goods”, “Mirror View”, “Huis Clos”.

Rate: 8½. 

Artist: www.mildreda.com / www.facebook.com/officialmildreda

Label: www.dependent.de / www.facebook.com/dependent.records Read the news on ‘Blue-Devilled’.

Listen to “Blue-Devilled”:

About Mildreda

Mildreda is the Dark-Electro project of Belgian musician Jan Dewulf, also known for Diskonnekted, Your Life On Hold and Mildred In Oblivion. Dewulf made his Mildreda debut with the compilation album “Coward Philosophy” on Alfa Matrix in 2016, before moving to Dependent Records for “I Was Never Really There” in 2021. “Blue-Devilled” follows in 2023, also on Dependent Records, alongside the video for “Devil’s Gaze”.

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 Ghilain Vermeersch) Out now is the new album from Mildreda, “Blue-Devilled”, via Dependent Records. Together with the release the Belgian band also presents a new black and white video for “Devil’s Gaze”.

Jan Dewulf adds: “My aim was to come up with a club track but at the same time I wanted to stay true to a dark electro sound.” Based in Belgium, Mildreda made their debut with the compilation album “Coward Philosophy” in 2016 on Alfa Matrix. In 2021 the new album “I Was Never There” was released.

“Blue-Devilled” is available on all streaming and digital platforms along with a limited 60-page artbook CD edition with a bonus CD.

Below is the video for “Devil’s Gaze”. Read the review of ‘Blue-Devilled’.

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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Emileigh Rohn, the artistic force behind Chiasm, has released her latest EP titled “Cut Right Through” via COP International. This record serves as a preview to her seventh studio album, “Zone”. The EP features collaborations with artists such as Assemblage 23, Mildreda, :10, and hEADaCHE.

Recorded at MausHaus Studio over a span of three years (2020-2023), “Cut Right Through” offers an eclectic mix of electronic music navigating through various sub-genres, from dancefloor-ready anthems to glitch-infused tracks. The EP surely showcases Rohn’s versatility and unique approach to electronic music.

Mastering of the EP was done by Jean-Marc Lederman, ensuring a top-notch audio quality. The visual aspect of the EP was in the hands of Christian Petke/DCore providing artwork that complements the musical content.

You can check out the new 7-track EP right now, including 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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The Swedish old school EBM act ELM is back with a second EP from the well-received, intense EBM album “Penetrator”. Expect powerful bass lines, a compelling drive, and commanding vocals and lyrics. Oldschool EBM like we like it.

The EP is available on Bandcamp from today on with other platforms to follow in the future.

The EP boasts a total of seven tracks, including remixes of the title track by J Wølf (Mildreda, Mildred in Oblivion, Your Life on Hold, Diskonnekted) and the iconic Swedish electronic act System. You’ll also find alternative dance floor mixes of “Excuses Excuses” and “Ha-Ha-Ha-Begär,” as well as the exclusive, heavy-hitting, DAF-inspired new track titled “For L…”.

Highly recommended for fans of early Nitzer Ebb, DAF, and Front 242.

Complete discography:

• Hardline (Deluxe edition) (2016)
• Edge EP (2016)
• Wapenrustning EP (2017)
• Kampftrinker EP (2017)
• Extreme Unspoken Tension (X.U.T. Remixed) EP (2019)
• Death Of The North EP (2019)
• Penetrator (Deluxe edition) (2022)
• Steel Hope EP (2022)
• Vessel Of Violence EP (2023)

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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Genre/Influences: Dark-Ambient.

Format: Digital.

Background/Info: Mildred In Oblivion is a new project driven by Jan Dewulf. This Belgian musician/producer gained recognition with his different projects; from Diskonnekted (Electro/Future-Pop) to Mildreda (Dark-Electro) to Your Life On Hold (Cold-Wave, Post-Punk). This debut work by Mildred In Oblivion is a conceptual work inspired by the concept that ‘Camus’ philosophy is linked to the Buddhist idea of the ‘bardo’.

Content: Jan Dewulf composed 10 songs. The opening part of the work is pure Dark-Ambient music revealing monstrous and overwhelming sound treatments. It’s an icy Ambient trip, which has been joined by Gregorian chants. The global atmosphere is clearly reminding me of early Raison D’Être although this work is more elaborated. Quite progressively we’re entering a still dark, but dreamier part with omnipresent strings. Tracks at the end are becoming heavier and have been accomplished with orchestra sound arrangements. There also is a track with fragmented vocal parts adding a Ritual touch to the work.

+ + + : The older he gets, the more Jan Dewulf take me by surprise. All his projects are quite different from each other revealing an artist who clearly feels fine dealing with different music genres. There for sure is a touch of Mildreda running through Mildred In Oblivion. The epic arrangements and tormented atmospheres from the new Mildreda-album “I Was Never Really There” have been extracted and transposed into a pure Dark-Ambient journey. The debut cuts are impressive; not that original as you easily recognize the influence of Raison D’Être and a bit of In Slaughter Natives, but the format sounds fully accomplished. The tracks are extremely elaborated for Dark-Ambient music, which in a way makes the originality of the work and the main difference with the aforementioned projects. This is a tenebrous experience reaching a new climax at “Death”. It also is an album with a strong visual appeal, creating visions of desolation and despair so this is not exactly the kind of work I would recommend listening to when having depressed feelings.

– – – : There’re a few cuts right in the midst of the album, which are more into dark, evasive fields that couldn’t convince me. There’s a kind of Cinematographic appeal emerging here, which might be an idea for another project…

Conclusion: “Sisyphus’ Journey” clearly reveals an artist who is familiar with Dark-Ambient music, and who has distilled an album with a few brilliant passages.

Best songs: “Death”, “Waves Of Bitterness”, “Conception”, “Transmutation”.

Rate: 8.

Artist: www.wolf-productions.be / www.facebook.com/mildredinoblivion

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

About Mildred In Oblivion

Mildred In Oblivion is the dark-ambient project of Belgian musician and producer Jan Dewulf, who works from his own Wolf Productions studio. Dewulf has run Mildreda since the 1990s, its first self-released cassette dating from 1995, and later added the electro-pop project Diskonnekted, the cold-wave and post-punk project Your Life On Hold, and the label-side work that goes with them.

“Sisyphus’ Journey” is the first Mildred In Oblivion album. It was issued in 2021 by the German label Ant-Zen, a long-running imprint for industrial, rhythmic noise and ambient releases. The project name links back to Mildreda, and Dewulf later brought Mildred In Oblivion into the Mildreda album “Blue-Devilled” in 2023.

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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Genre/Influences: Dark-Electro, Industrial.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Mildreda is the Dark-Electro/Industrial project of Jan Dewulf. While he was already active with this project during the 90s he mainly got recognition with the Electro-Pop project Diskonnekted while he, in the past few years, was more active with the Goth/Wave formation Your Life On Hold. He now strikes back with the fourth full length of Mildreda, which also is the first one released on CD format.

Content: Jan Dewulf reveals a rather diversified piece of work, which is however dominated by Dark-Electro sound sculptures. Some songs are supported by dark, melodic strings while other pieces are more into Industrial elements. I also noticed a few cuts mixing Dark-Electro and Industrial together with overwhelming epic arrangements. Notice by the way you’ll hear Dirk Ivens (Jan composed the music for the last Dive album) and Cyan (The Eternal Afflict) singing on two songs while Don Gordon (Numb) contributed to the production of one cut.

+ + + : The album reveals different influences, but Mildreda took me by surprise with “Liaisons Dangereuses” (there also is a great clip of this song) and “Erased” featuring Don Gordon. The epic/orchestral arrangements running through both cuts are absolutely impressive, creating a kind of new Dark-Electro dimension. It’s an imaginary hybrid between Yelworc and In Slaughter Natives. I also have to mention the Industrial-driven “Echoes” featuring Dirk Ivens, which sounds like a more elaborated Dive-song. The last part of the album also reveals 3 brilliant songs. “Blame It On The Moon” features the charismatic voice of Cyan. “Opposite Choice” is accomplished with a Techno touch and “Dream Machine” sounds like a great final track. Last, but not least I also have to say a word about the great ghost-like vocals’ production of Jan Dewulf, which matches this sound.

– – – : The album has something versatile and I regret there are no more Orchestral/Epic driven songs. Both debut cuts are a little bit hesitant, but quite progressively this album reveals great surprises.

Conclusion: Jan Dewulf has already done promising things in his career, but this Mildreda album might be his best work ever!

Best songs: “Liaisons Dangereuses”, “Opposite Choice”, “Erased”, “Dream Machine”, “Blame It On The Moon”.

Rate: 8½.

Artist: www.mildreda.com / www.facebook.com/officialmildreda

Label: www.dependent.de / www.facebook.com/dependent.records

About Mildreda

Mildreda is the Belgian dark electro project of producer, vocalist and songwriter Jan Dewulf from Ostend. It started in the mid-1990s, when Dewulf, influenced by Belgian acts such as The Klinik, began working with synthesizers and home-recording equipment. The self-released cassette “II Castrato” appeared in 1995, followed by “De Laffe Denker” in 1996. Dewulf later put the project on hold and concentrated on Diskonnekted, and from 2017 on the gothic rock band Your Life On Hold, whose album Echoes From The Bardo Side-Line reviewed in April 2021.

Mildreda returned in 2016 with the digital compilation “Coward Philosophy” on Alfa Matrix. After signing with Dependent Records, the project released “I Was Never Really There” on 20 August 2021 on CD and as a download, its first physical album. The eleven tracks include “Echoes” with Dirk Ivens, “Blame It On The Moon” with Cyan of The Eternal Afflict and “Erased” with Don Gordon of Numb; Claus Larsen of Leaether Strip mastered the album. “Reinvention Of Pain”, “Liaisons Dangereuses” and “Inner Judgement” were issued as singles the same year.

The concept album Blue-Devilled followed in December 2023, and the double album “Realities” on 28 August 2026, again on Dependent; Dewulf discussed it in the Mildreda interview published by Side-Line. The live line-up consists of Jan Dewulf and Christophe “Salva” Salvatore. “I Was Never Really There” is the album that started the Dependent period.

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: Gothic, Dark-Wave, Goth-Rock.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Belgian Your Life On Hold last year released its third full length album. The title of the album wants to be ‘a metaphor for the main idea behind Your Life On Hold. It’s the in-between world, that no-man’s-land between different stages in your life, between relationships, between darker days and better days. It’s the very core of what Your Life On Hold is all about’. Driven by the creative spirit of ‘John Wolf’ (aka Jan Dewulf), 2020 has been a real prolific year for this musician. Next to this work he also signed to Dependent where he’ll release a new Mildreda-album and he also composed the music for the newest Dive-album.

Content: This album moves on where “My Name Is Legion for We Are Many” stopped. You get a similar mix of powerful guitar playing mixed with Electronic arrangements and the deep, growling vocals of John Wolf, which once again reminds me of Wayne Hussey. Most of the songs have something melodic (let’s not forget Jan Dewulf was active for years with his Electro-Pop project Diskonnekted), but there’s still a part of rage emerging from this opus. The work also features a few softer cuts, the long-during “I Can Feel Every Part” being for sure the most noticeable one. Notice one of the songs is featuring vocals by Artaud Seth.

+ + + : Your Life On Hold doesn’t innovate, but simply seems to compose the music they like. It’s an entertaining work alternating powerful passages –and even true speed rhythms (cf. “Let’s Start A War”) together with softer, dark-dreamy songs. I prefer the hardest cuts, “Erase Me”, “Save Me From The Void” and “Anywhere Out There” being the most noticeable songs. I already mentioned “I Can Feel Every Part”, which is an interesting piece for the way it has been built up while featuring some Gregorian chants in the background. The last point I want to mention is the great lyrical writing from some songs.

– – – : This album is absolutely pleasant and entertaining and you can hear some passion emerging at the surface, but the main point that hurts is that the songs are somewhat predictable after a while. John Wolf is a great vocalist, but I sometimes miss a more spontaneous way of singing.

Conclusion: This work is a pleasant listening, but I’m convinced this artist can do better.

Best songs: “Erase Me”, “Save Me From The Void”, “Anywhere Out There”, “I Can Feel Every Part”, “Nowhere Train”.

Rate: (7).

Artist: www.yourlifeonhold.com / www.facebook.com/yourlifeonhold

Label: www.solarlodge.de / www.facebook.com/SolarLodgeRecords

About Your Life On Hold

Your Life On Hold is a Gothic rock project from Ostend, Belgium, started in 2017 as the solo vehicle of John Wolf, the stage name of Jan Dewulf, and later expanded into a full band. Dewulf is also known for the Electro-Pop project Diskonnekted. The project’s debut, “Burning For The Ancient Connection,” was followed by “My Name Is Legion For We Are Many,” and then by “Echoes From The Bardo” on Solar Lodge in 2020. During that year Dewulf was also active with Mildreda, signed to Dependent, and contributed music to a Dive album, making 2020 a prolific year across his projects. “Echoes From The Bardo” is the release reviewed here.

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: Industrial, Electro-Industrial, Industrial-Ambient.

Format: Digital, CD, Box (CD, Vinyl, Vinyl 7”)

Background/Info: Dirk Ivens (The Klinik, Absolute Body Control, Sonar, Motor!k) is back on track unleashing a new album of his sonic alter-ego Dive! Throughout the years he collaborated with soul mates Eric Van Wonterghem (The Klinik, Absolute Body Control, Sonar, Monolith, Detune-X) and Ivan Iusco (Nightmare Lodge). There also was an album in collaboration with Sigillum S while the previous full length (cf. “Underneath”) also featured Rafael M. Espinosa (Geistform). Dirk this time joined hands together with Jan Dewulf (Your Life On Hold, Diskonnekted, Mildreda). It’s not their first collaboration as Diskonnekted in 2006 released the “Frozen”-EP featuring Dirk Ivens.  

Content: It doesn’t really matter with who Dive collaborates with; Dive remains Dive! Driven by an Electro-Industrial sound and the spooky vocals of the artist, this new work is directly linked to the particular ‘dark’ and ‘industrial’ sound of the Belgian sound terrorist. I however have to say that this work is probably the darkest Dive-album ever; you simply can hear it the tormented atmospheres, which became pretty explicit at some more Ambient-driven songs in the midst of the work.

“Underneath” was the most sophisticated Dive work so far, but some tracks from this opus are even moving a step further. The drum patterns from some tracks have never been that complex; even featuring a kind of slow Industrial breakbeats at “Black Star”. This work is filled with anguishing spheres, little sonar bleeps and ‘Klinik’-al’ sequences. Notice by the way, the title song is also an early Suicide Commando track on, which Dirk sung while “Inside Your Head” is an original Monolith-song featuring Dirk as guest singer.

The EP featured at the ‘Box’-edition reveals “EP Versions” of the songs “Inside Your Head” and “Black Star” plus remixes by Numb and Suicide Commando.

+ + + : The “Frozen”-EP from Diskonnekted already was a song that could have been released as Dive, but “Where Do We Go From Here?” confirms there’s a real connection and chemistry between both artists. Jan Dewulf injected a refreshing –although tormented, touch to the Dive sound. It’s the darkest and most disturbing work to date, which is accentuated by 3 more ‘ambient’-driven pieces on, which some background drones are empowering the darkness mixed with Ivens’ spooky vocals. But the best passages clearly are the most danceable cuts like the brilliant opening song “Inside Your Head”, but also “Black Star” driven by an Industrial –although breakbeat inspired, cadence. The minimalism running through “Invisible” is another remarkable cut while the title-song –as the last track, reminds me of good-old Klinik. On top of the production you still will notice the charismatic vocal performance of Dirk Ivens. From the EP-tracks I especially recommend the elaborated remix of “Death Machine” (one of the so-called ‘Ambient’-cuts) by Don Gordon (Numb).

– – – : I’m not as convinced by the softer, Ambient-driven songs. The production of Ivens’ vocals remains absolutely great, but I now and then miss the more enraged, shouting way of singing from the early years. The Suicide Commando–remix from “Leave Me Be” couldn’t convince me; the tune being a bit simplistic and not adding a bonus to the song.

Conclusion: The first self-named Dive album was released in 1990 (!), but 30 years later the Belgian Industrial ‘dino’ is still kicking ass. The collaboration between Ivens and Dewulf opens perspectives for the future!

Best songs: “Inside Your Head”, “Black Star”, “Where Do We Go From Here”, “Invisible”, “Leave Me Be”.

Rate: (8½).

Artist: www.dirkivens.com / www.facebook.com/TheKlinikDiveSonarAbsoluteBodyControl

Label: www.outofline.de  / www.facebook.com/outoflinelabel

About Dive

Dive is the solo alter-ego of Belgian artist Dirk Ivens, also known from The Klinik, Absolute Body Control, Sonar and Motor!k. Past Dive collaborators include Eric Van Wonterghem, Ivan Iusco and Sigillum S, with Rafael M. Espinosa featured on the previous album “Underneath”.

“Where Do We Go From Here?” pairs Ivens with Jan Dewulf, known from Your Life On Hold, Diskonnekted and Mildreda. The two had already worked together on Diskonnekted’s 2006 EP “Frozen”, which featured Ivens as a guest. The album was released in December 2020 on Out Of Line in digital, CD and a limited box edition combining CD and vinyl formats.

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, Soundtrack.

Format: Digital.

Background/Info: The new Psy’Aviah album is a collaboration and conceptual work between the Belgian musician and photographer ‘GNY’ aka Gwenny Cooman (who’s also involved with Mildreda). Yves Schelpe got inspired by her work and composed a Soundtrack for the exhibition GNY under the conceptual title “Steden Schuilen Niet Wanneer Het Regent” (translated “Cities Don’t Seek Shelter When It Rains”).

Content: The album indeed is an original ambient soundtrack featuring 11 tracks. Psy’Aviah transposed his Electro-Pop-Dance-Trance style into pure reverie. The multiple strings accentuate the Ambient side of the work, but I also noticed numerous field recordings (or samplings) now creating a dreamy impression and then a kind of astral trip. Some cuts are more mysterious like while others feel like an Electronic ballad.

+ + + : Artists are often dreaming to compose a Soundtrack. I don’t know if it was part of Schelpe’s bucket list, but he remarkably transformed himself into that style. The work is achieved with poignant strings while the multiple astral passages only reinforce the Ambient impression. I also noticed great analogue-like sound effects, which are a cool wink to some famous pioneers in this music genre. I don’t want to compare this artist with others, but some elements make me think to a modern perception of J.M. Jarre. “Slow Motion Bright Flashing Neon Lights” is a great exposure of this resemblance. But my favorite song is “The Escalator” for its mysterious sphere, which however remains devoted to Ambient.

– – – : The work is missing an absolute ‘master’ song although there’s a real potential hiding behind this work. But what I’m really missing is the addition of some real acoustic instruments like a saxophone or even guitar ao.

Conclusion: This new Psy’Aviah album is definitely one out of the box, but it for sure opens new perspectives for the artist.

Best songs: “The Escalator”, “Slow Motion Bright Flashing Neon Lights”, “Clinical Nature”.

Rate: (8).

Artist: www.psyaviah.com / www.facebook.com/psyaviah

Label: www.alfa-matrix.com / www.facebook.com/Alfa.Matrix

About Psy’Aviah

Psy’Aviah is an industrial rock, electroclash and dark EBM project from Antwerp, Belgium, driven by Yves Schelpe. The project took form in 2004, initially focused on live performances, and won the Studio Brussel Demopoll that same year with “The Future Of The Sun”. In 2007 Schelpe teamed up with Len Lemeire (Implant, 32Crash) to record the first album. Festival appearances followed, including BIMFest 2008 and Waregem Expo Gothic Festival 2009, alongside support slots for Subsonica and Emilie Autumn. The DJ EP “Ok / Virtual Gods” was released in 2012.

Psy’Aviah’s 2020 album “The Earth Keeps Spinning, Without Being Noticed” is a conceptual collaboration with Belgian photographer Gwenny Cooman, known as GNY and also involved with Mildreda, composed as a soundtrack for her exhibition “Steden Schuilen Niet Wanneer Het Regent”.

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 Roger op den Camp) Out via Dependent Records on 22 January 2021 is the fifth album “The Inevitable Relapse” by Fïx8:Sëd8. It’s their third for Dependent and will also come as a limited edition of containing a 36-page hardcover artbook and the bonus CD “Rail at a Liar”.

The bonus disc will feature remixes, or better covers, by such acts as Cryo, 2nd Face, Anmistia, and Mildreda.

This oldschool dark-electro-project from Wiesbaden (Germany) landed their first album in 2006 when they released “Humanophobia”. It was followed by “Dormicum” in 2009 after which the band took an 8 year pause to relaunch in 2017 with the album “Foren6” and “Warning Signs” which was released last year.

Here’s the teaser for the album. Read the review of ‘The Inevitable Relapse’.

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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Belgian photographer GNY (aka Gwenny Cooman, also known for her work in the band Mildreda) recently organized an exhibition of her work under the conceptual title “Steden Schuilen Niet Wanneer Het Regent” (Cities don’t seek shelter when it rains) in Wetteren (B).

For this project she also collaborated with artist and musician Yves Schelpe of Psy’Aviah who wrote a dark ambient soundtrack inspired by her work that played during the exhibition, reinforcing the atmosphere of the photographs, adding a unique sonic dimension to the exhibition, giving tones of hope and peace, but also of darkness and melancholy highlighting the contrasting sides of city and nature.

That soundtrack, “The Earth Keeps Spinning, Without Being Noticed”, is out now on Alfa Matrix as a download album (via Bandcamp) or as streaming via Spotify. Good to know, the Belgian national radio broadcast Klara already took one track, namely “The Escalator”, from the album to be used in a show for which you can see a video below.

We had a talk with both artists regarding this special collaboration.

SL: You never released an instrumental let alone an ambient album before, how did this one come about?
 
Yves/Psy’Aviah: After my previous, more or less traditional, album “Soul Searching” I set my eyes on working more on theatre soundtracks or atmospherical pieces. I did that a lot more in the early stages, but now I felt a need to go back to supporting a story, to collaborating on a different level and letting the music be supportive instead of dominant. I loved her photography work, and so when Gwenny asked me to do something for her closing night, I of course jumped on the opportunity.

SL: I presume you also listen to ambient then, many preferences?
 
Yves/Psy’Aviah: My ears are open to anything I like, so ambient is in the collection too… Let me say that I’m hugely inspired by work from Moby: I love how he layers piano and a ton of strings and pads. His ambient work is something I was drawn to from the get go. Other artists I like a lot are Mark Isham (his work for Black Mirror’s “Arkangel” for example), Eric Serra, Inon Zur (his soundtracks and solowork, especially the Dragon Age works are very much my cup of tea) Deuter (certainly albums “Prana Yoga” and “Atmospheres”), the more poppy Enigma (but check out his less beat-driven tracks like “The Dream Of The Dolphin”), Dirk Veulemans, Vangelis, and I could go on and on…

SL: I was actually quite surprised by this album, ambient tends to go nowhere in a lot of cases, but this one really has a true destination with tracks that develop nicely, I guess that your dream pop heart lays enough structures in there?
 
Yves/Psy’Aviah: Well, I think ambient is such a big umbrella term that people don’t find their way anymore in the vast amount of work and variety that exist in the genre, let alone what it means, or can mean, and end up listening to ambient music that isn’t their cup of tea… Just like every music genre ambient has so many genres, it’s impossible to describe them all.

There are indeed a few big broad distinctions: either you have a clear study of sound and sound patterns, in which it isn’t really music but a research project of what can be done. Then there’s the very experimental electro-acoustic work I know of Dirk Veulemans for example (he’s a fellow Belgian talent and well known for his work) – and apologies Dirk if I’d describe it wrong – but I feel their storytelling in the work is a big focus as well as experimentation – finding the boundaries of what music is. And then I think we have the more chill-out or soundtrack synthesizer music. We all know Vangelis and JMJ did pioneering work, it is a lot more focused on melodic elements. For me personally the storytelling is present, but also creating a kind of mood is important, certainly because it was written based upon existing photography work.

SL: How did you start on this one? Did you get to see Gwenny’s material on forehand?
 
Yves/Psy’Aviah: One can’t write music for an exhibition (unless that is the experiment of course) if you don’t know what the source material is, and if you don’t understand what the artist wants to evoke in terms of emotions. All this music is driven by Gwenny’s photography, by her vision and talking about her work. I do need to be drawn to something before it can inspire me, so it goes without saying that the emotions I experienced with the selected photography work of Gwenny on that exhibition were really strong, and very relatable. I could imagine certain things right off the bat. It’s in subtle ways such as the angles the photos are taken at, as well as the general subjects and the stories one can see behind them.

Gwenny Cooman: I think I saw Psy’Aviah’s first gig, and I was immediately overwhelmed. I remember thinking ‘okay, the new Praga Khan is born’. Psy’Aviah evolved and made their own sound and story, and I always liked the look and feel of the artwork and the content of the songs. Also, I noticed Yves carrying out street experiments and having other original crossover ideas. So I knew something exciting could be done.
 
SL: Did you use any specific techniques as far as the sound collages go?

Yves/Psy’Aviah: When I knew what the themes were I knew I had to incorporate a lot of field recordings – which meant going outdoors and recording sounds in train stations, elevators, nature, fields, underwater, on the bus, in supermarkets etc… As they’d be an underlying tone in either rhythmic elements (such as an electric escalator with its clicks and clacks tuned to a nice clock as if it were a drum machine, or train tracks repeating over and over, water streams that have a natural tendency to emulate a sort of repeating vibe, yet always with a little tonal difference…).

Those natural rhythms of nature and city were a perfect match and were for me personally the technique I had to use to get in tune with the photography of Gwenny.

Of course that is not everything, using those sounds and creating a compelling storyline in a track, using my background of chord progressions I like and basslines (either slowed down very much, or sped up a lot), to evoke emotions and contrast them to the sometimes dull machinal sounds, is what the motivation (or technique) was in the end.

SL: Gwenny, I know you have been busy with photography for quite a few years, but it’s the first time you are in the spotlights yourself with that expo. How different do you consider the material for this expo compared to what you did in the past?
 
Gwenny Cooman: I guess the way I look at things, and the stuff that draws my attention has not changed. But the last couple of years I’m more focussed and spending more time and effort to enhance my work. I discovered how different a picture can be in its digital form from one in printed media. The printing process was really a search for pictures with printing results that matched my expectations, and same for the framing.

SL: Did you select the pictures for the expo or were they made with the intention to organise an expo?
 
Gwenny Cooman: My partner convinced me to have an exposition now instead of postponing things until, say, the year 2080 (I tend to keep thinking I can improve something). Most pictures were not made especially for the expo, they were selected to fit the idea I had under the title ‘cities don’t take shelter when it rains’.
 
I am currently working on a new expo (aiming to exhibit summer 2021 in Ostend) which will have a different setup. I have a concept in mind and all pictures will fit that new story and concept and will be made with that purpose. I can’t reveal yet what I have in mind, but I can say it will involve topics such as science and superstition, some astronomy and astrology so to speak. 

SL: What subjects do attract you the most? I see a few with buildings, but it’s the stray dog that has triggered quite some feedback from our readers on Facebook. Care to explain?
 
Gwenny Cooman: I guess it’s about the questions that come to mind. Is it an abandoned dog? Are there houses in the neighbourhood where he could find a home? What kind of life has he had?
 
The expo showed pictures of abandoned places and the less attractive aspects of citylife in black and white. In contrast to these pictures, there were colourful pictures of nature (this use of black and white versus colours is reflected in the movie Yves made).

I was very lucky to have been able to do some travelling, and especially to visit some weird or abandoned places in the United States. The Salton Sea for example is one of those places where I can just sit and watch the emptiness, the leftovers of thrilling lives and expectations that place once held. So afterwards, when people look at a picture from that kind of abandoned place, they also start making up their own stories and interpretations of what happened.   

SL: Every photo artists probably dreams to have his/her pictures released in a photo book. A dream or something you might want to materialize in the nearby future?
 
Gwenny Cooman: Indeed! Working with Yves/Psy’Aviah really added value to everything. We inspired each other and that really is the most joyful feeling. If I make a picture and then look at it once I’m home and if it’s a good one, it makes me smile. But if someone else feels that way about my work, or even better, if they are inspired by it, that beats it all. So the movie and soundtrack that resulted out of our collaboration was really a very nice piece of art. Of course, a book would also be great. For my next project, I have some ideas on a catalogue which should be a crossover between photographs, poetry and literature. Still dreaming…

SL: What’s your favorite setup and why?
 
Gwenny Cooman:  I try to take silent, subdued pictures. Most of the time unintended. So I don’t go out thinking ‘now I will photograph this place or that person’, but the subjects are more or less random encounters. Of course I tend to go places where these encounters are more likely. But that means I travel with a wonderful and compact Leica camera so that I can always capture the moment.

You can check out the complete album 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 GNY) “The Earth Keeps Spinning, Without Being Noticed (Original Ambient Soundtrack)” is a brand new ambient album by the Belgian electro pop act Psy’Aviah, which can be downloaded now from Bandcamp.

The material on the album is inspired by the work of Belgian photographer GNY (aka Gwenny Cooman, also known for her work in the band Mildreda). She recently organized an exhibition of her work under the conceptual title “Steden Schuilen Niet Wanneer Het Regent” (Cities don’t seek shelter when it rains) in Wetteren (B). The dark ambient soundtrack was played during the exhibition.

Under the current Covid19 crisis that limited the number of visitors and forced the cancellation of the planned live performance of Psy’Aviah at the closing of the exhibition, it was decided to make this soundtrack available for everyone showcasing Psy’Aviah dark ambient side and GNY’s photographic work.

Check it out below. The album download holds a selection of pictures taken by Gwenny Cooman for you to enjoy. Expect an interview with both artists in the next days.

You can also download the release straight from Bandcamp 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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Alfa Matrix continues the ‘Matrix:Reb00ted’ series, this time with 2 remix albums by Belgian artist Psy’Aviah displaying his electro dance trip pop remixes cruising through the Alfa Matrix band catalogue. The releases are first released via Bandcamp and will follow on all other platforms in the next weeks.

Here’s what is available on both volumes plus also a preview of what to expect.

Matrix:Reb00ted – The Psy’Aviah Guerrilla – Zion [Electro Dance] Warfare [07]

This volume holds 15 songs from Alfa Matrix’s massive music repertoire remixed by Psy’Aviah. Offering the electro dance side of the Belgian band you can expect a harder selection of modern dancefloor assaults with these bands: Ayria, Suicidal Romance, Zombie Girl, Junksista, Leaether Strip, Essence Of Mind, Nebula-H, Diffuzion, Schwarzblut, Diskonnekted, Krystal System and Psy’Aviah. You can check all the songs below and download it from Bandcamp directly.

Matrix:Reb00ted – The Psy’Aviah Guerrilla – Zion [Trip Pop Electro] Warfare [06]

This volume also holds 15 songs from Alfa Matrix’s massive music repertoire remixed by Psy’Aviah. The “trip pop electro” edition reveals a selection of more moody and catchy synth electro songs thanks to bands like Mondträume, Metroland, Aiboforcen, Helalyn Flowers, Acylum, Junksista, Entrzelle, Llumen, Virgins O.R Pigeons, Halo In Reverse, Schwarzblut, Mildreda, Totem Obscura and Psy’Aviah, also including guest vocals by Kyoko Baertsoen, Mari Kattman and Fallon Nieves. You can check all the songs below and download it from Bandcamp directly.

Previous volumes

Here’s a list of the 5 previous volumes which Alfa Matrix released in the past with remixes executed by Kant Kino, Simon Carter, Acylum and Aesthetische !

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: Gothic, cold-wave.

Background/Info: “Decade” is a truly appropriate title to celebrate ten years of the Belgian gothic/cold-wave formation Der Klinke. This work brings a nice selection of original songs, remixes and even a few new cuts.

Content: Sixteen songs have been selected! Remixes have been made by their old town-mate Jan Dewulf under the monikers of John Wolf and Mildreda while Serge Feys did a remix as well. “Decade” is a cool selection of typically cold-wave tracks with guitar playing reminding me of The Sisters Of Mercy and electronic arrangements plus leads adding a nice little extra to the work. Some cuts at the end of the work are more electro-driven, but the most significant ones remain the guitar focused songs.

+ + + : Der Klinke is a band that has made an interesting progression and their last studio album “The Unexpected” (2017) sounded as a real consecration. I have to admit this selection of songs, remixes and one of the new songs (cf. “Curtains”) will show you the potential of this Belgian gothic formation. The songs reveal great guitar parts and accomplished electronic arrangements. The “Original Version” of “The Doll” remains one of the band’s biggest songs in history, but I also have to mention “Our Dance In Darkness” and “Someone Who Smiles”. The album is available as a great, artistic digipak and features 16 (!) songs!

– – – : Some of the most electronic driven cuts aren’t exactly my favorite ones! The guitar  playing  is too essential to this band!

Conclusion: If you never have heard of Der Klinke before, this album is more than simply an introduction! You’re going to like this formation, which has made a noticeable evolution throughout the years.

Best songs: “The Doll – Original First Version”, “Our Dance In Darkness”, “Someone Who Smiles”, “Curtains”, “My Frozen Heart”, “We Are Here – Mildreda Remix”.

Rate: (8).

Artist: www.derklinke.be / www.facebook.com/DER.KLINKE

Label: www.wool–e–discs.be / www.facebook.com/woolediscs

About Der Klinke

Der Klinke is a Belgian gothic and coldwave band formed in 2009 in Ostend by producer and songwriter Geert Vandekerkhof, a club DJ since the 1980s. Its album chronology runs from “Square Moon” (2011) and “The Second Sun” (2012) through “The Doll” (2013), “The Gathering Of Hopes” (2014) and “The Unexpected” (2017) to “Bridges” (2018) and “Who To Deny” (2019). “Decade”, released later in 2019 on Wool-E Discs, gathers original songs, remixes and new material to mark the band’s first ten years. Der Klinke continued with the album “Facing Fate” in 2023.

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: Goth-rock.

Background/Info: Jan Dewulf is a Belgian artist who’ll be always linked to the electro-pop project Diskonnekted and the electro-industrial project Mildreda. It’s already seven years ago now that the last Diskonnekted album has been released and in the meantime Jan Dewulf became ‘John Wolf’ to start a new and totally different project. We now welcome the second full length by his new band.

Content: This band has nothing in common with their frontman’s aforementioned projects. This is good-old gothic music with some extra rock and even garage-rock elements on top. John Wolf has a perfect timbre of voice for this kind of dark music while he sometimes reminds me a bit of Wayne Hussey. The songs are carried by strong guitar, dark bass lines and electro-melodic arrangements. From softer, melancholic pieces to harder cuts there’s a perfect balance between the songs.

+ + + : Your Life On Hold is clearly inspired by good-old 80s productions in the genre, but I can’t say it’s a cheap copy from an established formation. There’s something personal running through the work and especially the hardest cuts (cf. “Tension” and “Cold Fever”) are little sonic jewels. “Cold Fever” is an accomplished song, which also evokes shoegaze and garage-rock influences. This album reveals the right harmony between cool guitar playing and electronic arrangements while I also like the vocals of the singer.

– – – : Next to some outstanding cuts the album also features a few ‘softer’ and a bit disappointing cuts. I especially refer to the more melancholic final parts such as “System Failure” and “Dead Tree”.

Conclusion: Jan Dewulf has accomplished a successful metamorphosis as John Wolf. Even if all of the tracks can’t totally convince me, it however is a band I highly recommend.  

Best songs: “Cold Fever”, “Tension”, “Bruised”.

Rate: (7).

Artist: www.yourlifeonhold.com / www.facebook.com/yourlifeonhold

Label: www.solarlodge.de / www.facebook.com/SolarLodgeRecords

About Your Life On Hold

Your Life On Hold is a gothic rock project from Ostend, Belgium, started in 2017 by Jan Dewulf, previously known for the electro-pop project Diskonnekted and the electro-industrial project Mildreda, under the new stage name John Wolf. The project expanded from a solo work into a full band including Augustijn Vermandere, Emeric Debusschere, Stefaan Vantyghem, Jonas Maes and Erwin Vantyghem.

The debut album “Burning For The Ancient Connection” followed in 2017, with “My Name Is Legion For We Are Many” arriving the following year as the project’s second full-length, released through the German label Solar Lodge.

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: New-wave, EBM, minimal-electro, dark-electro, gothic.

Background/Info: This compilation featuring 26 bands is a way to remember the great W-Fest (festival) that took in place this Summer in Belgium. The festival was spread over 4 days, 3 scenes and featured an impressive number of bands. The organization invited some legendary 80s artists next to contemporary groups.

Artists: Parade Ground, A Split Second, Simi Nah, Dive, Suicide Commando, TB Frank & Baustein, Vine La Fête, A Slice Of Life, Flesh & Fell, Doganov, Red Zebra, The Breath Of Life ao.

Content: The first CD is clearly devoted to different kinds of electronic underground music. Parade Ground and A Split second will Takes us back in time with some legendary 80s songs while the electro-pop & minimalism of other bands such as Simi Nah, Enzo Kreft, Vive La Fête reveal contemporary 80s inspired sounds. It also is a way to rediscover some living legends such as Dive and Suicide Commando plus smaller bands such as Mildreda, Pro Patria, Herrnia.

The second disc brings us a mix of ‘old’ and contemporary gothic/new-wave. Red Zebra is a band we all know in Belgium, and which remains one of our best 80s ambassadors. A Slice Of Life could be the next big thing from Belgium. Here again you’ll discover very diversified groups moving from Ground Nero to Flesh & Fell, from Doganoc to The Breath Of Life etc.

+ + + : This is a fully enjoyable compilation, bringing different genres and especially music decades together. It also is a way to realize Belgium has a real great underground scene.

– – – : I just regret there aren’t more ‘exclusive’ tracks featured on the album, but it remains first of all a way to promote a great festival, already announced for 2019!

Conclusion: After the terrible lost of the Eurorock festival, Belgium moves on with a new ‘big fest’: W-Fest.

Best bands: A Split second, Enzo Kreft, Herrnia, Vive La Fête, A Slice Of Life, Flesh & Fell, red Zebra, Doganov, The Breath Of Life.

Rate: (8).

Label: www.wool–e–shop.be / www.facebook.com/woolediscs

About W-Fest

W-Fest is an annual new-wave, EBM and gothic festival held in Belgium, running across several days and multiple stages. The 2018 edition drew on both veteran acts and contemporary bands, a mix reflected on this compilation.

The album was released on Wool-E Discs, the Belgian label that also documented the festival’s lineup through earlier compilations.

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: Industrial-pop, dark-pop, EBM.

Background/Info: Belgian project Aiboforcen is back on track with a new work, which has been released 7 years after the “Dédale”-album. “Dédale” also saw the daylight 7 years after the previous full length (cf. “Kafarnäum”). Benoit Blanchard remains the single operator when it comes to music, but he again was joined by several guest singers. Patrice Synthea (Regenerator) is somewhat presented as the band’s singer although she only sings a few songs. Other vocalists are Jean-Luc De Meyer (Front 242, 32 crash, UnderViewer), Mari Kattman, Damasius (Mondträume), Jan Dewulf (Mildreda, Diskonnekted), Lars Bass (Kant Kino) and Dan Barrett (Venal Flesh).

Content: Globally speaking “Sense & Nonsense” remains in the purest tradition of Aiboforcen. This band always has composed a very personal sound, which is dark, sophisticated and covering different influences. I can easily affirm that the new songs are more ‘pop’ than ever before, but don’t expect to hear traditional electro-pop. “Sense & Nonsense” features many melodic passages and catchy arrangements, but the sound is also dark and has something vicious. A few other cuts are a little bit harder and walking on EBM paths.

Patrice Synthea might be considered as the main vocalist although Jean-Luc De Meyer sings on 3 songs. One of these cuts entitled “Loud” is a real special one as it’s a cover version of Front 242!

The limited edition features a bonus disc with a few new songs (featuring the title cut), and also songs featuring a few extra singers such as Diana (Junksista) and LadyHell (Lovelorn Dolls)  plus the usual load of remixes by Diffuzion, Aesthetische, Neikka RPM, Daniel B/Prothèse, Implant, Psy’Aviah and Kilmarth.

+ + + : Aiboforcen remains a unique sound project, with an intelligent electronic approach. It has something pop-like, but definitely an antidote to the classical electro-pop standards. This is darker, even somewhat tormented, but still EBM-driven. The songs are featuring great strings and the usual amount of endless bleeps and filtered sound sequences. The female singers inject fragility (Patrice Synthea) and grace (Mari Kattman) creating a delicious contrast with some orchestral arrangements. Jean-Luc De Meyer stands for the harder (male)  vocal touch while Damasius is probably one of the most talented vocalists featured. The cover of Front 242’s “Loud” (“Pulse”-album) sung by Jean-Luc De Meyer is one of the most surprising songs, but it simply confirms Belgium remains the country of surrealism. I like this pop approach running through different songs and reminding some of the band’s most legendary cuts.

Last, but not least the bonus disc features multiple noticeable remixes. Daniel B/Prothèse did an amazing job remixing “We Woke Up The dragon” sung by his old band mate Jean-Luc De Meyer. I also want to mention the remixes by Implant, Psy’Aviah and Aesthetische.

– – – : The songs featuring the most legendary singer of the EBM scene (cf. J-L De Meyer) aren’t exactly the best songs from the album and that’s a pity. The main point about this album is probably its eclectic aspect. Some songs are really too different from each other so you sometimes get the impression two hear different bands on the same disc. That’s only accentuated by the different guest singers.

Conclusion: Aiboforcen is back on track, but feels like the band has never been away. It gets you a feeling of ‘coming home’ revealing multiple brilliant songs. Let’s no hope we’ll not have to wait 7 more years to get a new album.

Best songs: “In My Arms feat. Mari Kattman”, “Etching Herself In acid feat. Lars Bass/Kant Kino”, “Ritual Control”, “Life In The Valley Of Death”, “Caresse”, “Ablation A Vif feat. Dan Barrett/Venal Flesh” + “We Woke Up The dragon feat. Jean-Luc De Meyer – Daniel B/Prothèse Remix”, “Come Clean – Implant Never Comes Clean Remix”, “Lost In Translation feat. LadyHell/Lovelorn Dolls”, “Sense & Nonsense”.

Rate: (8½).

Artist: www.facebook.com/Aiboforcen

Label: www.alfa–matrix.com / www.facebook.com/Alfa.Matrix

About Aiboforcen

Aiboforcen is the project of Belgian producer Benoît Blanchart, also a co-owner of the Brussels label Alfa Matrix; Discogs lists the project’s discography back to 1995. “Sense & Nonsense” arrived seven years after the “Dédale” album and features Jean-Luc De Meyer (Front 242) and Mari Kattman among its guest vocalists. Blanchart discussed the writing process and the guest line-up in a Click Interview published the following month.

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 newest Aiboforcen album, “Sense & Nonsense”. You can order the CD, 2CD right here or you can go to Bandcamp to download the bonus tracks version as well. Enjoy the full album below.

For this release Blanchart has once again collaborated with a rather promising list of special guests. The first one is Jean-Luc De Meyer (Front 242, 32CRASH, Underviewer, …) who lends his unique voice on not less than 3 songs on this album, including an upbeat EBM cover version of Front 242’s very own “Loud” and the more atmospheric and darkish “The Arrival”.

Other noticeable appearance comes from Damasius of label mates Mondträume, Mari Kattman, Mildreda, Venal Flesh and Kant Kino.

Next to the normal CD version there is also a limited edition of the album which will hold a 13-track bonus disc entitled “An End Unto Itself” revealing some 3 exclusive non-album tracks including guest vocals by Junksista and Lovelorn Dolls plus own reinterpretations of 3 other album songs. Add to this a bunch of remixes.

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: Electro-industrial.

Background/Info: The legendary The Klinik front man last year struck back as Dive unleashing a great new opus entitled “Underneath”. One of the album’s hits “Let Me In” has been now released as EP-title song featuring 2 remixes of “Let Me In” plus 2 cuts. Notice by the way the EP is only available on vinyl format and of course as a digital release.

Content: “Let Me In” was remixed by Mildreda, the electro-industrial project of Belgian artist Jan Dewulf (known from Diskonnekted) and Attacke. Dewulf and Ivens know each other from the successful EP “Frozen”, which was released as Diskonnekted vs. Dirk Ivens. It sounded pretty Dive-like so Mildreda could only re-industrialize “Let Me In” in a hard cut. The remix by Attacke sounds pretty club-minded.

Both other and new cuts are the instrumental and more experimental-like “Hollie” plus a new Suicide cover version. Dive this time covered “I Remember” together with Alvar.

+ + + : “Let Me In” is the best choice as EP title song. The original electro-industrial cut was masterly remixed by Mildreda and Attacke. This song sounds like pure electro-industrial featuring the spooky vocals of Dirk Ivens together with great music carried by a terrific chorus.

– – – : I was less captivated by both other cuts. “Hollie” sounds like a pure B-side while the cover version of Suicide is not the best one I’ve heard from Dive. If you remember “Rocket USA” for example and you compare it with “I Remember” you’ll notice the hiatus. From a very personal point of view I think it also is a pity an artist like Dive no longer releases this kind of EP on CD format.

Conclusion: This maxi is a perfect opportunity to get back to the “Underneath” album, which remains a great album symbolizing the comeback of Dive after more than 10 years!

Best songs: “Let Me In – Attacke Remix”, “Let Me In – Extended Mildreda Version”.

Rate: (7½).

Artist: www.dirkivens.com / www.facebook.com/TheKlinikDiveSonarAbsoluteBodyControl / www.facebook.com/dirk.ivens.3

Label: www.outofline.de  / www.facebook.com/outoflinelabel

Read the news on ‘Let Me In’.

About Dive

Dive is the solo alter-ego of Belgian artist Dirk Ivens, also known from The Klinik, Absolute Body Control, Sonar and Motor!k. Ivens released the album “Underneath” in 2017 on Out Of Line.

“Let Me In” collects two remixes of the title track plus two additional cuts: a rework by Mildreda, the project of Jan Dewulf, who also records as Diskonnekted, and a version by Attacke. Dewulf and Ivens had already worked together on Diskonnekted’s 2006 EP “Frozen”, which featured Ivens as a guest. Dive’s next album, “Where Do We Go From Here?”, paired Ivens again with Dewulf and appeared on Out Of Line in 2020.

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

A special fan-pack has been prepared for the new Aiboforcen album. The 2CD box comes augmented with 4 signed exclusive cards inserted in a special black envelope. This unique Aiboforcen gem is retracing the band’s last 4 albums on Alfa Matrix and will be included in the first 50 orders of the new “Sense & Nonsense” album placed via the official Alfa Matrix webstore.

Still mostly centered today around mastermind Benoit Blanchart and female singer Patrice Synthea (Regenerator lead singer), Aiboforcen strikes back. The return was already hinted at on the Aiboforcen Facebook page a few weeks ago, but today the Belgian industrial label Alfa Matrix has announced more details about the upcoming album “Sense & Nonsense”.

You can already pre-order the CD, 2CD (including the special funpack for the first 50 orders) and via Bandcamp the download version of the limited edition set. Here are already 2 songs to enjoy.

For this release Blanchart has once again collaborated with a rather promising list of special guests. The first one is Jean-Luc De Meyer (Front 242, 32CRASH, Underviewer, …) who lends his unique voice on not less than 3 songs on this album, including an upbeat EBM cover version of Front 242’s very own “Loud” and the more atmospheric and darkish “The Arrival”.

Other noticeable appearance comes from Damasius of label mates Mondträume, Mari Kattman, Mildreda, Venal Flesh and Kant Kino.

Next to the normal CD version there is also a limited edition of the album which will hold a 13-track bonus disc entitled “An End Unto Itself” revealing some 3 exclusive non-album tracks including guest vocals by Junksista and Lovelorn Dolls plus own reinterpretations of 3 other album songs. Add to this a bunch of remixes.

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

Still mostly centered today around mastermind Benoit Blanchart and female singer Patrice Synthea (Regenerator lead singer), Aiboforcen strikes back. The return was already hinted at on the Aiboforcen Facebook page a few weeks ago, but today the Belgian industrial label Alfa Matrix has announced more details about the upcoming album “Sense & Nonsense”.

You can already pre-order the CD, 2CD and via Bandcamp the download version of the limited edition set. Here are already 2 songs to enjoy.

For this release Blanchart has once again collaborated with a rather promising list of special guests. The first one is Jean-Luc De Meyer (Front 242, 32CRASH, Underviewer, …) who lends his unique voice on not less than 3 songs on this album, including an upbeat EBM cover version of Front 242’s very own “Loud” and the more atmospheric and darkish “The Arrival”.

Other noticeable appearance comes from Damasius of label mates Mondträume, Mari Kattman, Mildreda, Venal Flesh and Kant Kino.

Next to the normal CD version there is also a limited edition of the album which will hold a 13-track bonus disc entitled “An End Unto Itself” revealing some 3 exclusive non-album tracks including guest vocals by Junksista and Lovelorn Dolls plus own reinterpretations of 3 other album songs. Add to this a bunch of remixes.

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

Read the review of ‘Let Me In’.

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: Dark-electro, industrial, epic-electronics.

Background/Info: Belgian artist Jan Dewulf got some name and recognition for his work under the moniker of Diskonnekted. But Jan was already composing music before he got involved with Diskonnekted. Mildreda saw the daylight in the 90s and got reactivated in 2009. We last year welcomed the digital album “Coward Philosophy”, which was a real cool surprise. This EP is getting back to this album, but still serves as an appetizer for the upcoming full length.

Content: Mildreda can be the best described as the offspring between In slaughter Natives (for the epic/orchestral elements) and Yelworc (for the dark-electro link based upon haunting atmospheres). The result might be a bit compared to Stiff Miners and clearly reveals a very single approach in dark electronics. A few elements might also remind to the complexity of Frontline Assembly and Mentallo & the Fixer. The vocals are harsh, but a few songs also reveal a clearer production revealing Jan Dewulf’s more familiar timbre of voice.

+ + + : I’m totally devoted to the epic and orchestral elements running through a few cuts. This makes the originality of Mildreda and I’m convinced it’s the kind of sound that could bring this band to a higher dimension. Especially the epic chants create mystery, and also support the work with dense, dark layer. And Mildreda is definitely into darkness and even obscurity. “Stories (Short Edit)” is a great illustration of this tormenting electro style. I also like the fact this band has nothing in common with the electro/future-pop sound of Diskonnekted. Mildreda is something apart and remains a promising project.

– – – : I just noticed a few cuts, which are more average like. I guess it’s not really a surprise it here concerns the songs without epic arrangements.

Conclusion: Just imagine In Slaughter Natives getting contaminated by a dangerous sonic virus. The result of this new hybrid would be called Mildreda!

Best songs: “Stories – Short Edit”, “I Got The Morbs – In Abalba”, “Erazor – Extended Version”, “The Parting – Club Edit”.

Rate: (8).

Band: www.facebook.com/officialmildreda

Label: www.alfa–matrix.com / www.facebook.com/Alfa.Matrix

Read the news on ‘Cowards’.

About Mildreda

Mildreda is the project of Belgian musician Jan Dewulf, also known for Diskonnekted, joined on stage and in songwriting by Gwenny Cooman.

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

Speaking of a big promotion campaign, the Belgian electrolabel Alfa Matrix has handed out over 4000 copies of the CD-sampler “Sounds From The Matrix 019” at the double concert of Front 242 this past weekend in Brussels. Also playing as support act were the electropop label mates of Front 242, Metroland.

On the CD sampler you find no less than 20 bands from the label’s roster with mostly new and/or exclusive material.

For those who missed the event, the compilation also comes as a free CD which each order that is placed on the label’s CD/DVD/vinyl webstore or as a download compilation at album price on Bandcamp. Each volume of the compilation series is a much sought after item as it regularly pops up on online auction sites reaching ridiculously high prices, especially when no longer available.

On this new volume you’ll find material from Elektroklänge, Metroland, Ad:Key, ELM, Mildreda, The Psychic Force, Star Industry, Crytek, Mondtraüme, Kant Kino, Junksista, Psy’aviah, Helalyn Flowers, Lovelorn Dolls, Sin.Sin, Imjudas, Komor Kommando, Mentallo & The Fixer, Implant and Schwarzblut. A very diverse compilation which showcasts very well the current line-up of the label.

You can stream the release below, or get it right here on Bandcamp. But if you place an order for a physical product, you’ll of course get it for free on CD!

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

The Belgian electrolabel Alfa Matrix has launched it’s 19th (!) volume in their popular ‘Sounds From The Matrix’ series. On “Sounds From The Matrix 019” you find no less than 20 bands from the label’s roster with mostly new and/or exclusive material. The compilation comes as a free CD which each order that is placed on the label’s CD/DVD/vinyl webstore or as a download compilation at album price on Bandcamp (and if you use the code november84546 you’ll instantly get 30% off on top).

Each volume of the compilation series is a much sought after item as it regularly pops up on online auction sites reaching ridiculously high prices, especially when no longer available.

On this new volume you’ll find material from Elektroklänge, Metroland, Ad:Key, ELM, Mildreda, The Psychic Force, Star Industry, Crytek, Mondtraüme, Kant Kino, Junksista, Psy’aviah, Helalyn Flowers, Lovelorn Dolls, Sin.Sin, Imjudas, Komor Kommando, Mentallo & The Fixer, Implant and Schwarzblut. A very diverse compilation which showcasts very well the current line-up of the label.

You can stream the release below, or get it right here on Bandcamp. But if you place an order for a physical product, you’ll of course get it for free on CD!

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

“Wapenrustning” is the title of a brand new – super strong – 5-track download single/EP by the Swedish oldschool EBM sensation ELM. The single is the final one to be taken from the “Hardline” album released earlier this year. Earlier on you already got the very strong “Kampftrinker” and “Edge which both made a very fast appearance in the better industrial music playlists around.

The single will pop up on other platforms in the next 2 weeks, for now the Bandcamp fans get it exclusively before everyone else.

Besides 3 remixes of the title track (including one by that other great dark wave act Mildreda and one by the equally refined Spiritual Front) this delicious single also holds 2 non-album tracks: “Burial” and “Blackout”.

You can download the single right here from the official Alfa Matrix Bandcamp page or listen to it below.

This were the 2 previous singles: “Kampftrinker” and “Edge”.

For those who missed out on the full album “Hardline”, check it out below (or get the 2CD boxset instead).

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

Out of the blue the belgian Alfa Matrix label releases the 2nd volume in their massive ‘Electronic Body Matrix‘ series. The first volume of this compilation series (check the release here) got qualified by many as the ultimate anthology of the EBM / electro-industrial scene. The 2nd edition of the “Electronic Body Matrix” compilation box once again manages featuring a real “who is who” artist selection bringing all new, exclusive or rare tracks.

This 2nd edition presents some 76 bands across 4 CD’s plus an exclusive download link giving you access to another 40 additional bands for a total music play of 116 songs (over 70% rare or previously unreleased tracks), an astounding 10 hour sonic journey! Marketed as a deluxe carton box with an extensive 28-page booklet with band pictures and credits.

All together on one same compilation, the leaders of the electronic scene of yesterday and tomorrow come together and include: FRONT 242 (exclusive mix), NITZER EBB (exclusive mix), FIXMER/MC CARTHY, RHYS FULBER, DANIEL B. PROTHESE, DIVE, BRUDERSCHAFT, POUPPEE FABRIKK, ARMAGEDDON DILDOS, KOMOR KOMMANDO, ELEGANT MACHINERY, AYRIA, FUNKER VOGT, PLASTIC NOISE EXPERIENCE, NOISUF-X, NEUROTICFISH, AESTHETISCHE, THE PSYCHIC FORCE, IMPLANT, [SITD], ALIEN VAMPIRES, HOCICO, ORPHX, NÖVÖ, METROLAND, PITCH YAR OF MATTER, MONDTRÄUME, CULTURE KÜLTUR, TOLCHOK, DEUTSCHE BANK, AVARICE IN AUDIO, THE SEXORCIST, PSY’AVIAH, AIBOFORCEN, ELEKTROKLÄNGE, R.I.P. (ROPPONGI INC PROJECT), ENTRZELLE, and many more, without forgetting the impressive remix work contributions of bands like EISFABRIK, FADERHEAD, ORANGE SECTOR, NZ, ELM, etc.

Add to this all hardcore ambassadors of today’s pure EBM league in the likes of SPETSNAZ, ELM, NZ, AD:KEY, AUTODAFEH, AGREZZIOR, ORANGE SECTOR,KANT KINO, CELLULOIDE, LIGHTS OF EUPHORIA, DIFFUZION, PATENBRIGADE: WOLFF, ACCESSORY, CEPHALGY, AMORPHOUS, VENAL FLESH, PROTECTORATE, STOPPENBERG, CENTHRON, LLUMEN, CARDINAL NOIRE, MILDREDA, CRYTEK, KONER, etc.

The exclusive bonus download link included in this 4CD box also gives you access to some 40 additional songs from artists like MENTALLO & THE FIXER, ACYLUM, SERPENTS, ZOMBIE GIRL, AENGELDUST, EQUITANT, NETZ, STUDIO-X, SIVA SIX, NEIKKA RPM, ESSENCE OF MIND, DEKAD, INTERFACE, NEUTRAL LIES, CIRCUITO CERRADO, TRAGIC IMPULSE, WANT/ED, HELALYN FLOWERS, DIVERJE, SCHWARZBLUT, TOTEM OBSCURA, DIGITAL GEIST, KILMARTH, SIGNAL OPERATOR, ELECTRO SYNTHETIC REBELLION, DIGITAL GEIST, TECHNOID, DEN C.T. BUG, and many more!

The full track listing can be checked right here.

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

Read the review of ‘Cowards’.

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

Background/Info:

Read the news on ‘The Memory Institute’.

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

The 45th track on our free download compilation “Face The Beat: Session 4” (featuring 92 tracks) is by the Belgian cult darkwave act Mildreda.

In the early 90’s Jan Dewulf started making electronic music under the Mildreda moniker. What he offered was dark electro / dark wave following the Belgian tradition of bands like The Klinik but with more melody. Although the act gathered a loyal following in no time and that his demo tapes (“II Castrado” and “De Laffe Denker”) became well sought after collector items (we have them in the office actually), a label deal was surprisingly never concluded (back then at least) for this excellent project.

Frustrated by the lack of decent studio gear and by the absence of any label deal, Jan Dewulf decided to set the project on hold. In the meantime he joined Heyaeb as producer and live keyboard player and later on started his own new project, Diskonnekted.

In November 2009 however Mildreda had a surprise reunion gig and the virus spread as he revived the project for good. Last year the project finally got an official release via the massive “Coward Philosophy” download album which became the biggest selling download album for Alfa Matrix breaking all records. There was indeed a huge cult following awaiting!

You an find out more on the band on their official website and on Facebook.

Listen to “Erazor” below and download it right here.

Check our “Face The Beat: Session 4” page on Bandcamp to discover the other 91 bands. All donations will go to charity.

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

Read the review of ‘The Memory Institute’.

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

This morning IKEA Ghent (Belgium) was the place to be for bands wanting to know something more on the future of the music business and how to make the best of it. More precisely, the Belgian electronic music label Alfa Matrix was presenting a workshop at IKEA to the musicians behind the bands Llumen, ELM, Psy’Aviah and Mildreda (Diskonnekted), respectively Pieter Coussement, Peter Elm, Yves Schelpe and Jan Dewulf. For the label it’s the first time it has organised a joined workshop with other bands inside Belgium, but it surely won’t be the last.

Side-Line talked with Alfa Matrix’s promo manager Bernard Van Isacker who gave the workshop.

SL: First of all, you also work as an online marketeer during your daytime job?

B: Yes, I’m the online marketeer for a major seed company (number 5 in the world) for whom I develop the social media strategy, and in that role I have been giving several trainings regarding social media tricks in Belgium and in the Netherlands, but also regarding CRM since one doesn’t go without the other. For those who don’t know, CRM stands for customer relationship management and is an approach to managing a company’s interaction with current and potential future customers. We then analyse this data to improve business relationships with customers. But that’s another story.

SL: Why did Alfa Matrix decide to do this workshop?

B: This is not the first time we do this, in the past I have organised a couple of such workshops with Alfa Matrix bands but then more face to face, so one band at the time. I did several in Belgium, in Scandinavia and in Greece (where I had sessions with Siva Six and Virgins O.R. Pigeons).

But the idea to get a few bands together only started a year or 2 ago when I had a very interesting networking diner in Oslo (Norway) where several of the Alfa Matrix bands were joined by such people as John Fryer, Paul Kendall and the Electro Spectre duo. You immediately could sense there was an energy that you don’t often see.

I also know that there is a need for bands to discuss about the topics we talked about today such as marketing, communication and an insight on how the algorithms work for such companies as Spotify, Apple Music and so on.

Anyhow, when I was at an intimate event at the Club 52 here in Belgium a few weeks ago, I talked with the people behind Llumen, Psy’Aviah and Mildreda who were playing there and suggested them a joined workshop in the near future. They all agreed, so a few days later we decided upon a precise date, a location and I prepped the workshop itself. In the meantime I had invited a few other bands over too, so that’s how Peter (ELM) also joined us, the others will be joining me during a future workshop that fits their agenda.

I also plan a few of these workshops outside Belgium with the next one being in Oslo where Kant Kino, Essence Of Mind and a few other acts will be joining.

SL: What was the purpose of this meeting?

B: It’s always good to meet the artists from time to time, so that is already a good plus. But the main purpose of the workshop is to help the participating bands with their communication, their online presence, and explain them a few things which the general public and most bands are not aware of (because often their label doesn’t know either). Today for instance I presented them my future vision on the (online) press and club scene.

SL: And that is?

B: That’s classified, but it’s safe to say that my vision is quite radical. Back in the days (let’s say 10 years ago) people told me I was mad to start investing in digital distribution at such a fast pace. 10 years late I’m not so mad anymore so it seems, at least what that aspect is considered :). You have to know that I talk a lot with people from inside the business (digital distributors, major promo companies, …) to know the ins and outs of what happens and what is going to happen. I also have a few trusted people from within the scene (distributors, musicians such as Yves Schelpe, other label owners) with whom I discuss quite often about what directions the music industry might take. From that input and my own knowledge and intuition I distill a vision for Alfa Matrix which I then share with my 2 other colleagues in the label.

SL: How did you come up with the idea to do this workshop at IKEA?

B: I’m an IKEA addict basically… :). Ghent is in the centre of the Belgian cities where our bands come from, so it was kinda logical to choose this city as the central place. And since it isn’t the first time I do meetings at IKEA, it kinda was logical to keep it here. Plenty of coffee and plenty of space, I only asked the bands to be here at 10 AM so we were sure to have the space we wanted.

SL: What came out of this workshop?

B: Well, besides the content of my presentation which gave these bands a nice insight in how the business works these days, there were also a few new and exiting things that have come out of our interaction, which we hope to materialise soon. Add to this that a few really nice surprises appeared which opened opportunities. I personally strongly believe in the 1+1=3 setting if you have people sit together who are all very driven by the desire to learn. That was the case here.

SL: Do you plan to publish this guide on the net?

B: No, nice try though! This presentation and its explanation is strictly restricted to the bands signed to Alfa Matrix and is not for external distribution. In the past I have worked for labels on consultancy basis giving them ‘intel’ on a few things, but that’s only because they contracted me for this. Since I’m now only busy with Alfa Matrix, it will remain for the Alfa Matrix eyes only :).

SL: Can we expect some more of these workshops taking place in Belgium?

B: Sure, we plan one in Brussels as well in the near future, probably at IKEA Zaventem :). Next we also plan one in the Netherlands and in Mexico where we also have a few bands under contract.

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.

www.side-line.com

For the occasion of a special very small Alfa Matrix event which took place at the B52 music club in Eernegem (Belgium) 1 week ago, 3 Belgian acts from the label (Mildreda, Psy’Aviah and Llumen) released an exclusive split-album compilation on just 100 copies. The release was offered to all attendees for free and the rest of the copies are now being offered for sale via the Alfa Matrix webstore.

This 9-track CDEP (also available as a download) features the exclusive result of a remix war organised by the 3 bands plus 3 bonus songs taken from each artist’s new album. The result is a mix of frozen harsh dark elektro assaults, edgy noir dance pop and moody EBM. Only 100 copies were made, so be quick.

Highly recommended and an absolute must-have sample for some of the best Belgian electronic bands available in the current dark scene! And for those who want to see some live footage from the small event, head straight to our Instagram account where we posted some video material (just scroll down until November 28).

Here’s the EP as it popped up on Spotify:

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. 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

The Antwerp based singer Marieke Lightband is the freshest addition to the live line-up of the electro trip pop act Psy’Aviah. She will be performing live with the band in the upcoming months and so far 2 concerts have already been confirmed. During the live show the band will be presenting the most recent Psy’Aviah album “Seven Sorrows, Seven Stars”.

You can see the band live (together with Mildreda and Llumen) at the B52 music club on November 25th 2016. The first 100 visitors will also get a free ‎exclusive remix album including 6 tracks where each band remixes each other. The release is aptly called “#‎B52Remixes”. Check the event page right here.

The other live show take place at the Muziekcentrum Kinky Star in Ghent on September 9th. Playing that night as well is Karl Hefner & Hugh Lagerfeld. This show has free attendance! You can register right here for the event!

So far Psy’Aviah’s most recent studio album “Seven Sorrows, Seven Stars” has been getting stellar reviews, Side-Line gave it a fat 8/10 for instance. You can listen to it below or order the CD/2CDbox right here.

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

Mildreda is a Belgian project set up during the 90s by Jan Dewulf. Jan became a renowned and established artist under the Diskonnekted moniker while his early project remained rather unknown. Mildreda got reactivated for a one-shot concert in 2009. Because of the enthusiast reactions Jan Dewulf (assisted on stage by his girl-friend Gwenny Cooman).started writing a new songs, but once again less happened. The ‘newest’, previously unreleased songs together with the early demo tracks and a few live cuts, have been now released via the digital album “Coward Philosophy” on Alfa Matrix. This album reveals the industrial & epic side of Jan Dewulf.

(by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Mildreda was your first project, right? What did you keep in mind from your early years as musician and how did you get in touch with dark-electronic and electro-industrial music?

Jan: Mildreda was indeed my first musical project. I remember the urge to be creative and tell my own story. I even didn’t have my own keyboard when I made my first Mildreda tape. So I just borrowed the keyboard from a friend instead. I remember those first days as both exciting and frustrating. Exciting as it was the beginning of a great adventure. But also frustrating because I didn’t have decent studio gear to really make what I had in mind.

And how did I get in touch with dark electro music? After I discovered Nine Inch Nails and then later our very own A Split Second, I quickly discovered the dark electro music that was booming back then in Germany. Placebo Effect, yelworC, etc.: it was the musical language that I wanted to speak myself.

Q: What was the main reason to put Mildreda in stand-by and finally reactivate the project in 2009?

Jan: Now that I re-released the old demo tape “De Laffe Denker” from 1996, it’s funny to read that everybody is so excited by it. Because back then, the reactions from labels or promoters were rather low or even nonexistent. Frustrated by the absence of any label deal and the lack of studio gear, I decided to put things on hold and start a new adventure. That’s when I started Diskonnekted. Ten years later, it started as a fun one time only event in November 2009: Mildreda’s reunion gig on the birthday-party of DJ Chesko in the attic of “The Klinke” (Ostend). Dirk Ivens who was playing records that night, suggested to continue with Mildreda for real. As the reunion gig was a blast and the audience clearly wanted more, I got seduced by Dirk Ivens’ idea. The rest is history.

Q: You composed several new songs in 2009, which remained unreleased till your album “Coward Philosophy”. I noticed an interesting evolution in sound and writing on these songs. Tell us a bit more about it and the evolution from your early Mildreda period till the newest cuts?

Jan: First, let me clear out something. The new songs were recorded in the period between 2009 and 2016. It was an adventure that started in 2009 indeed, but it kept on living and evolving during the years that followed. It really was a continuation of where I left it back in the days. But it was a blessing to revisit my roots with decent studio gear. Somehow the Mildreda sound comes quite natural and spontaneous.

Q: “Coward Philosophy” is an interesting title, but what’s the real meaning behind?

Jan: It’s a free translation from “De Laffe Denker”, as the 1996 demo tape was called (and which is also included as bonus material). It’s about having and proclaiming wild and smart ideas, but doing nothing or doing the opposite instead. Wearing a ‘Green Peace’ T-shirt for example, but leaving garbage in the park. Posting a video about animal torture on Facebook, but eating a fat hamburger an hour later. But don’t worry, I am sure we’re all coward philosophers now and then.

Q: How did you finally get the idea to release the album “Coward Philosophy” and do we have to see it as a new departure or just a way to put an end behind this band?

Jan: History repeated itself as no label bothered to send me feedback on the demos I sent them. Although I’m pretty sure it sounded exciting. So I said ‘fuck it’ and wanted to release all the unreleased material digitally. Seba Dolimont (Alfa Matrix) was so kind to help me with that. And that was pretty much how it went. The idea was to put things on hold after that. But the reactions are so overwhelming, that I might just make some new material after all.

Q: What are your further plans generally speaking? 

Jan: I am busy with a lot of things in the studio. I want my next release to sound great so I am experimenting with different styles and I am trying to optimize my studio skills. At this point, I don’t know what that next release is going to be as I am still in an experimental phase. I am sure it’s important to recharge the batteries now and then and that’s exactly what I am doing right now.

I also hope to produce some other bands in the near future. Working on other people’s stuff is a cool and stimulating experience.

Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries

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

Background/Info:

Read the news on ‘Coward Philosophy’.

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

Read the review of ‘Coward Philosophy’.

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

Out now for immediate download is “Coward Philosophy”, a 33-track strong download album by Mildreda, the first band created by the Belgian artist Jan Dewulf (Diskonnekted) in the early 90s. The band had everything to make it big time but frustrated by the lack of decent studio gear and by the absence of any label deal, Jan Dewulf decided to set the project on hold, until 2009 that is. That year Mildreda did a one-night show on the birthday-party of DJ Chesko in the attic of The Klinke (Ostend).

It pushed Mildreda to record 13 new tracks which until now never had been released. On “Coward Philosophy” (available here) you’ll find a lot of bonus material including a fully remastered version of the cult 1996 demo tape “De Laffe Denker” as well as a recording of the live gig the band played in Bruges (Belgium) on March 14th 1998 as the opening band for Plastic Noise Experience and Terminal Choice.

Mildreda was/is a dark electro act ‘pur sang’ and you can hear the era of inspiring bands like Placebo Effect, Numb, yelworC, Will, Project Pitchfork, In Slaughter Natives and others in the material. Acting alone in the studio, Jan is supported on stage by Gwenny playing synth and sequencer.

You can stream the release below and download it right here on Bandcamp. More than strongly recommended!

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

Interview of Mildreda: the first featured band from 108!

The new volume of “Endzeit Bunkertracks”  (the 7th already, available right here) will be released once again as a deluxe 4CD carton box featuring 68 songs mixing dark-electronics, EBM, dark-electro-pop and related genres. The box also contains an extended 32 page booklet masterfully designed by Japanese designer Tomoki Hayasaka. Next to the 4CD there also is a bonus download card giving you access to some 50 additional songs! Side-Line once again has been asked by Alfa-Matrix to recommend some interesting artists.  That’s why we decided to power this new volume by featuring 10 short interviews of bands that you’ll discover on this new volume plus an extra interview by the “Endzeit Bunkertracks” instigator Séba Dolimont.

(by Stéphane Froidcoeur aka DP)

SL: From Diskonnekted to Mildreda sounds like 2 different sonic universes set up by one and the same artist. How do you manage this musical schizophrenia and how did you come to set up Mildreda?

Jan Dewulf: Mildreda was my first musical project in the 90’s. At the turn of the century I started Diskonnekted because I wanted something fresh and more modern instead of the dark and cold industrial beats of Mildreda. But now I feel the exact opposite: Diskonnekted doesn’t inspire me anymore. It’s much more fun and inspiring to revisit my personal roots again. And it all comes naturally and spontaneous. Btw, it’s no schizophrenia. No, it is much worse than that. I am also working on some guitar post-industrial/post-shoe gaze stuff with Your Life On Hold, and even on ambient now and then.

SL: What does the sampler series “Endzeit Bunkertracks” evoke to you and what do you expect from this feature?

Jan Dewulf: “Endzeit Bunkertracks” has always been a very ambitious project bringing together so many bands while keeping things on a high quality level. It’s a blueprint for DJ’s and a great quest discovering new bands.

SL: Mildreda got the opportunity to be the first band of this sampler. How does it feel to be in pole position?

Jan Dewulf: It was a big surprise for me to see Mildreda as the opening track of this new compilation. I was really honored and feel very happy about it. I salute Séba for this, as he’s always been very supportive to me, even when I was a pain in the ass sometimes. The track is quite evil and dark. I am sure the dramatic intro fits the compilation well.

SL: What brings the future for Mildreda?

Jan Dewulf: I am finalizing a first album and would to love to release it later this year. It’s going to be mean and dark. I feel confident about it because the sound of Mildreda has a certain uniqueness. Throughout the years I gathered myself a comfy music studio and now I can finally make the tunes and sounds like they were meant to be when I started Mildreda back in the days.

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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